QuiCQ 04/03/2025
Wait a SEC!
"Wall Street never changes. The pockets change, the suckers change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes, because human nature never changes."
— Jesse Livermore
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This week started, if the last week ever ended, with another fury of headlines which makes it difficult to remain focused. My nearly neighbour Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was so right when he quipped: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen".
Onwards…
Starting with the European market today, a glance at the top performers table above shows what yesterday was all about: Geopolitics! With eight out of the top ten stocks being Defense related names, the market is definitely further positioning for increase spending. Also, the best performing market in the region was Germany, after rumours of a massive German spending plan started spreading.
Over in the US, the session started all “blue sky”, but early gains were given back fast and the indices hovered around the previous’ day close for a few hours. Then, Mr T out of the White House started throwing around that ‘T’ word again and Mr Market was quick to point out who he thinks the big loser of increased Tariffs is. Here’s the intraday chart of the S&P 500:
The number of falling stocks outpaced those of rising names by over 2:1, but sector performance was even more telling:
There’s a clear exodus out of tech stocks. And at the upper end of the performance gamma we find nothing but defensive sectors. For more details, I recommend you to go back to yesterday’s Quotedian (click here) and find all out about “Rotation, Rotation, Rotation”.
US yields slumped in mix of safe haven buying and on-balance disappointing economic numbers. Here’s the US 10-year treasury yield chart:
A quick side note on those ISM numbers reported yesterday:
Slower manufacturing coupled with higher prices paid simply cry:
STAGLFATION!
Interestingly enough, yields have closed lower for seven consecutive weeks now, which is more or less the period since the current US administration has become noisy (pre- and post inauguration):
Let’s use the following chart as a segue into the FX realm then - lower yields (grey) is working as gravity on the Greenback (DXY - red):
As the following table shows, especially the safe haven classics (CHF & JPY) have done very well over the past few hours:
After a one-day upside blip for cryptos, the selling has resumed. The Bitcoin chart looks unhealthy:
Finally, the USD weakness also helped Gold, amongst others, to reclaim at least half of the recent dip:
The weaker Dollar has not helped crude oil (dark grey) prices though, which rather trade inline with that lower yields (grey) and a lower USD (red):
That’s all for today, have a great day!
And now to the title of today’s QuiCQ: “Wait a SEC”.
How can the regulator turn its head from the following X, x’ed by probably the highest member of the current member (two notches above DJT), Elon Musk:
John Belfort was a Wall Street sheep in comparison …
