Quick guide for all the peasants watching the Royal Wedding tomorrow…
How to spot the monarchy (fwd to 1:35)…
Italy and Emerging Market dominated the market headlines this week.
Italian stocks, bonds, banks, and credit all cratered this week after Five-Star and The League agreed a notably anti-establishment plan…
Emerging Market stocks fell modestly on the week (the 3rd drop in 4 weeks) but EM FX and EM Debt collapsed…
Small Caps were the week’s best performer (all squeezed), Trannies managed gains, but The Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all ended red
The Dow tumbled to perfectly unchanged today at the close with Small Caps the only winners…
In the US, Small Caps managed a 3rd record high day in a row… “Most Shorted” Stocks saw a massive short squeeze into the close last night…
It appears Bank stocks don’t like higher yields or steeper curves…
FANG stocks stumbled… worst week in two months (FANG also failed to take out the Fed highs before rolling over)
And Tesla tumbled…
VIX was up on the week but with some notable volatility intraweek…
As Specs swung back to anet short vol position for the first time since the end of Jan…
With Stocks and Bonds down this week, it was the worst aggregate loss in two months…
Treasury yields ripped lower today, ruining all the “record” move headlines for the week (biggest yield jump in 3 weeks doesn’t sound so impressive) –
was this week’s melt-up really all about rate-locks on massive IG issuance? Over $30 billion – Monday $17.38b, Tuesday $6.725b. Wednesday $800m, Thursday $5.200b, Friday $750m
30Y Yields stalled at the 3.20% level once again…
With 30Y down over 6bps from yesterday’s highs…
The yield curve steepened the most in over 3 months this week with 2s30s up 10bps… (though we do note that 2s30s rolled over after tagging its pre-FOMC Minutes level…
And while Russell 2000 outperformed notably, Small Cap banks hugely underperformed, catching down to the flattening yield curve…
Emerging Market Debt tumbled for the 7th week in a row – back to Pre-Trump levels…
The Dollar rose for the 5th week in a row – the longest win streak since 2015 – and the biggest weekly gain since Dec 2016…
BBDXY
We do note that The Dollar remains below pre-Trump-election levels still…
Emerging market currencies bloodbath’d – not one Emerging Market saw its currency strengthen this week with Argentine Peso, South African Rand, and Turkish Lira suffering the most…
EM FX is down 7 weeks in a row and this week was the worst week since Nov 11th 2016 (Trump election)…
And while Ethereum ended the week unchanged, Bitcoin Cash crashed 15%…
No wonder really, since Meghan Markle appears to be bigger than bitcoin now…
Bitcoin vs Royal Wedding pic.twitter.com/ZcujJ1ADL1
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 18, 2018
In commodity land, dollar strength weighed heavily on PMs and copper but crude managed gains…
Finally, is The Fed about to make a big policy mistake?…