Judgment Day.

It was finally too much.

Blame the bond selloff. Blame Devin Nunes, his “secret memo”, and the all-out partisan warfare its release to the public will invariably catalyze. Blame fears of a coming trade war. Blame whatever you like, but on Tuesday, the bottom fell out.

Judgment Day. Judgment Day.

 

And wouldn’t you know it, just in time for Americans to be absolutely sure that stocks are going to keep rising:

And just in time to leave retail holding the bag:

They’ll invariably be someone out there (probably a Twitter personality with at least 40,000 followers, if not 1 million) who will remind you that this is just a blip on the radar screen, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that Tuesday was an unmitigated, global train wreck.

This was the worst day for stocks since the Gary Cohn resignation rumor. At one point, the Dow was down more than 400 points:

VIX at its highest since August:

As noted earlier, VXN closed at its highest since the election, despite the fact that the pullback from the highs in NDX has been relatively modest:

Healthcare stocks were Amazon’d:

There was no relief to be found from bonds, which is appropriate because after all, the ongoing bond bloodbath is probably the proximate cause for the chaos. 10Y yields rose above 2.73. It’s been one hell of a month:

30Y yields neared 3%, the highest since May of last year:

The dollar pared losses midday after Mnuchin tried (again) to lie his way out of the shit he stepped in last week. “I strongly support we have a free currency market that we don’t intervene in,” Mnuchin he said at a Senate Banking Committee, adding that his comments on the greenback in Davos “were blown out of proportion by media and were in no way intended to talk down dollar.” That is nonsense. He’s the Treasury Secretary – he knew damn well what was going to happen when he said that.

The emerging market ETF was down again today and you should note that this it’s been “vol. up, spot up” there lately:

Oil plunged by the most in seven weeks, but on the bright side, Bloomberg notes that “April WTI $80 call options traded more than 18,000 lots Tuesday in less than five minutes, [while] June $80 calls, March $70 calls and April $70 calls are also among the most active.” So some folks are definitely bullish.

Europe was a similarly bloody, with Italian stocks leading declines:

The VStoxx was up sharply, nearing a 16 handle at one point:

And it all started on Tuesday in Asia, where sour sentiment inherited from a shaky Monday on Wall Street sent Japanese and South Korean equities tumbling more than 1%:

While in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng fell the most in six weeks:

And H-shares (which at one point this month had risen for 19 consecutive sessions) fell 2%. Mainland shares were lower as well:

Cryptos nosedived amid reports that the CFTC has subpoenaed Bitfinex and Tether:

Oh, and Facebook says “no mas”:

lol. Facebook Bans Bitcoin Ads

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) January 30, 2018

Finally, don’t forget to tune in to the State of the Union address tonight if you think you might enjoy watching Donald Trump jerk himself off on national television.

It’s your chance to play Stormy Daniels – only you won’t get paid for it.

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