Trader: “I See It, And Still Don’t Believe It”

How many times have I said it? Your politics or your money, choose wisely. Well America has chosen and the country is going to “be great again” apparently.

Here’s an incredulous Richard Breslow on Trump:

I see it, and I still don’t believe it. But that’s a poor excuse to shirk one’s responsibility to figure out what this means for the markets. Now and going forward. It’s not as simple as it would seem from the headlines. Traders have to compartmentalize their personal views from their professional responsibilities.

There will be winners and losers, not superficially obvious. And to complicate things further, nothing will go in a straight line. Volatility will be making a comeback. I wonder if investors remember how to deal with it?

U.S. equity futures got whacked and they are back, at least for now, to where they started the year. But after a brief pause, at limit-down, they continued to trade. Initial reports were that they would remain closed until later in the day. People forgot, they just might bounce

But for other markets the effect has been much more nuanced — and important. U.S. Treasuries led a global bond explosion. Until traders remembered that this has real potential to set the yield curve on a much steeper path

The 5s30s steepening today has been nothing short of breath- taking. So powerful indeed that it turned the yield on the long bond from a 10bps sell-off to a sizable increase on the day

That wasn’t supposed to happen. But it was felt in the dollar, which began to pare its losses on cue from the bond- market reversal

You really do have to keep paying attention. You can be sure the algos will. Just take a look at when oil and gold reversed their initial moves. Markets won’t ignore yield curves. And I’ve already started receiving recommendations to look at emerging markets as a buy on this dip

What this all means in the long run, I don’t know. I have my concerns. But politics and trading are two different disciplines. Who knows, the president-elect has been clamoring for a rate hike. Maybe the Fed will accede to his wishes. Another wrinkle to keep short-rate traders up at night