Is Tim Cook in the house? Or is The SNB doubling down?

They tried to slam VIX (and failed). JPY was sold (but failed). And Crude was temporarily ramped (but failed). So how do you stall a sell-off - BREAK THE MARKET AGAIN!!

Becuase if oine thing stops selling... it's stopping retail from trading entirely.

But will it work?

Just as we saw in the August collapse, US financial stocks appear to be facing the harsh reality that other markets already recognize. While US financial credit markets have been anything but exuberant for weeks, equity options markets have now turned their bullish backs on the banks as Bloomberg reports the ratio of bearish to bullish options on the S&P Financials ETF has climbed to the highest level in a year this week, reflects rising demand for protection against losses as NIM hopes collapse and Fed "error" probabilities increase.

“We are helpless and not being able to do anything against this deliberate destruction to the oil installations. NOC urges all faithful and honorable people of this homeland to hurry to rescue what is left from our resources before it is too late.”

That’s from Libya’s National Oil Corp and as you might have guessed, it references the seizure of state oil assets by Islamic State, whose influence in the country has grown over the past year amid the power vacuum the West created by engineering the demise of Moammar Qaddafi.

If history is any guide - the mysterious flash crash "signal" that we have seen yet again in VIX suggests stocks rally and VIX tumbles into the close today:

We have seen these spike moves before and more often than not they have signaled future extreme tests for VIX - and in this case, that means stocks ramp.

Keep an eye on momentum ignition around 3:30pm. That said, both credit, crude and the USD are ugly for now on the heels of the "close calling" Fed which clearly has no idea why it hiked in December, but had to hike nonetheless.