Growth Scare Sparks Stock Chaos; Bonds & Bullion Jump As Bitcoin & The Buck Dump

This morning’s 8-sigma miss to the downside for Empire Fed manufacturing dragged the US Macro Surprise Index into the red for the first time since February…

Source: Bloomberg

And combined with near record low liquidity in equity markets (Top of book liquidity in the S&P 500 futures (the most liquid future in the world) is $2.12M available on the touch. This ranks in the zeroth percentile aka less than 1st percentile the last decade)…

The US majors swung wildly around all day. Nasdaq was the day’s biggest loser, The Dow the best performer but the swings suggested very little confidence either way…

With the S&P 500 pinned around peak Gamma levels around 4,000…

Musk and his bid for Twitter made lots of headlines today, pushing the price of the bot-heavy social media plunging below Musk’s initial purchase price announcement levels…

Musk dropped a lot of truth bombs, like “Trump admin has officials who accomplished more,” and “Biden admin doesn’t have the drive to get things done,” but this one really blew people’s minds…

*MUSK SAYS INFLATION HAS RESULTED FROM GOVT PRINTING MONEY

A quick look at the MMT corner pic.twitter.com/JLoAmFq1xd

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 16, 2022

VIX dropped today as stocks chopped. Smells like hedge unwinds coupled with derisking in the underlying (and this Friday’s OpEx has some serious Gamma leakage)…

Source: Bloomberg

Bonds were bid today with the belly of the curve outperforming the wings. The long-end drifted higher in yield on the day by the close while the 5Y was -5bps on the day…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar index tumbled today, back to pre-CPI-spike levels from last week…

Source: Bloomberg

Meanwhile, the Ruble hit 5 year highs against the euro…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin dropped back below $30k today, but remains its recent range (admittedly at the lows) post the plunge on Terra’s collapse…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold jumped back above $1800 today…

WTI surged again today, almost tagging $115, quite a dramatic swing from its sub-$100 lows less than a week ago…

Interestingly, Jet Fuel and Diesel prices tumbled today relative to Wholesale Gasoline’s jump (incentivizing refiners to shift their product mix)…

Source: Bloomberg

And finally, with wholesale gasoline prices being squeezed by refining bottlenecks, expect $5 gas prices at the pump very soon…

Source: Bloomberg

All of this is happening just two weeks ahead of the start of the summer driving season with gasoline suppliers stocking up to meet what’s expected to be high demand from leisure travel and office commuters. The question is, who will Biden blame this time?

Source: Bloomberg

No dip-buying there!