And To All A Good Night.

Well, barring some kind of catastrophe over the weekend, we’ll have made all the way to Christmas with Donald Trump as President of the United States. I suppose that’s a testament to America’s resiliency and to the durability of the country’s institutions.

This week a government shutdown was averted and a tax bill no one except corporate “citizens” likes got across the finish line. I guess that’s what counts as “so much winning” these days.

It was the fifth straight week of gains for stocks, although there were no new record highs to celebrate on Friday.

The weekly winning streak was extended despite the biggest outflows since September 2015 from U.S. equity mutual funds and ETFs (in the week through Wednesday):

Small-caps outperformed on the week:

But lagged behind other presumed winners as the odds of the tax plan becoming law increased:

Treasurys were little changed ahead of the holiday and ultimately, the curve flattened for a second day. Still, the story of the week was the steepening we saw on Monday and Tuesday.

The dollar ended the week little changed.

Good week for banks and a lot of folks are expecting the good news to keep coming between the effects of the tax bill and deregulation. Here’s a look at the relative performance since the election:

Notably, this was the worst day for Spanish stocks in three weeks and one of the worst days since the Catalan referendum:

Just to give you some perspective on the underperformance versus European equities more broadly, here’s the IBEX with the Stoxx 600 since the peak in May:

Today was a disaster for Bitcoin, which at one point plunged well below $11,000 and looked like it might break below $10,000. Yes, it rebounded, but give me a break:

Trading on Coinbase went down for an extended period and CME futs were halted at 9:45 ET:

The pain was spread across the entire cryptosphere on Friday, although by the late afternoon things were looking better.

Here’s what the heatmap looked like early Friday morning:

And here’s what it looked like by 3:30 p.m.:

Overall, this week has been an unmitigated disaster:

In fact, it’s the worst week since 2013:

Have an (extremely strong) eggnog for me this weekend….