It's crazy pills time - no doubt... Doha was a dud and Morgan Stanley's 52% crash in earnings was better-than-expected...
Did you really expect anything else...?
This means The Fed has a major problem - no turmoil means no excuses for hiking rates. Since Dec FOMC Hike, everything is now awesome:
- Dow +3.2% (Dow Earnings -3.5%)
- Inflation - CPI up from 0.6% YoY to 0.9% YoY, Core CPI up from 2.0% YoY to 2.2% YoY
- Unemployment Rate U6 down from 9.9% to 9.8%, U3 5%, Initial Claims down from 285k to 253k
- China Stocks +17% in last 2 months
- China FX vol -4pts to 7.6% in 2 months
But for now - this is the LOL WTF Chart of The Day...Dow tops 18,000 as EPS expectations collapse...
Dow 18,000 was saved atthe second by a quick VIX slam...
Futures markets show the day's real moves... and the utter buying panic that occurred at VWAP as US stocks opened for gambling... Stocks were bid at the China open, the Europe open, and the US open...
Small Caps ended the day best (squeeze)...
The Energy sector opened down over 2% and ended up 1.6%... sure why not!! Notiuce how everything died when Europe closed...
USDJPY was the first momentum igniter at around 830ET, but that failed - so another bigger move was unleashed at 0930ET when stocks opened did the trick...
Alao notice that Treasuries were dumped at the same time as USDJPY...also notice USDJPy and bonds decoupled from stocks inthe last hour...
By way of interest - today saw "Most Shorted" stocks once again face-ripped from the US open to EU close (+2.5%) back into the green for the year (Shorts havsd soared on 75% of the days in this upsswing off the mid-feb lows after losing during that 0930ET to 1130ET period almost non-stop on the way down...
NFLX had a tough day (thanks to AMZN news) ahead of earnings...except it was utterly panic-bid into the clso
Treasury yields emded the day higher but rolled over in the afternoon session...
The surge in commodity currencies off the opening Doha dump sent the USD index lower on the day...
Gold and Silver ended the day unch. Copper popped but crude was the big story, with its yuuge reversal...
The Crude curve steepened notably...
But we leave you with this...
Charts: Bloomberg