Monday was a train wreck from start to finish and that is all kinds of hilarious because it was just last week when folks were pouring money into U.S. stocks even as “the Trump train” continued to careen off the tracks and even as markets were palpably nervous about renewed flattening in the curve ahead of the Fed hike this week.
Things got off to a decidedly inauspicious start when Facebook moved sharply lower in the premarket just as Trump turned on Fox & Friends. And sadly, that is not a joke – those two things happened simultaneously.
.@seanhannity on @foxandfriends now! Great! 8:18 A.M.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2018
Yes, “great!”
lol. "great"
Sean Hannity on Fox & Friends!!! How any good President starts their week
throw in a nasty egg mcmuffin in bed and you're all set! https://t.co/eSYrWCDfd3
— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) March 19, 2018
Fast forward 45 minutes (give or take) and we got this:
A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2018
So that set the stage and it was all downhill from there. Futures tell the story – things started to go to shit around the European open and it never got any better.
Facebook was off the lows but it was still a truly horrible day:
This was the worst day for the Nasdaq 100 since the February 8 carnage and this is five straight days of losses:
That’s especially unfortunate considering that, as Bloomberg noted this morning, “investors poured $3.3 billion into the PowerShares QQQ Trust Series last week in the biggest weekly inflow since Oct. 27, 2000, when traders put ~$6.8 billion into the fund.”
“Just buy the damn robots” – or just buy SPY – whichever:
Nasdaq VIX up sharply:
This:
VXN > VIX by most since pre-XIVmaggedon. pic.twitter.com/Ws0hxwr3eA
— Luke Kawa (@LJKawa) March 19, 2018
Apparently, the 50-DMA is providing some “support” (for those of you who are into lines):
Autonomous Ubers are accidentally killing people.
- UBER PAUSING AUTONOMOUS CAR TESTS IN ALL CITIES AFTER FATALITY
But just because “Christine” is murdering people doesn’t mean the leveraged loan market isn’t still wide open:
- UBER IS SAID TO BOOST TERM LOAN SIZE TO $1.5B FROM $1.25B
Banks, energy and tech all down together (that’s not great):
The dollar fell versus most of the G10:
The pound rose on news that the EU and the UK have reached a deal on the Brexit transition period:
European shares were sharply lower on the session, with tech stocks leading declines, down some 2.5%:
Death cross for the Stoxx 600 and the DAX:
It wasn’t a great day for Micro Focus, whose shares fell a staggering 48% amid a smattering of disconcerting news:
Bitcoin has recovered a bit over the past 24 hours and it got a brief shot in the arm on Monday morning from none other than Kuroda who, speaking at the G20 in Buenos Aires lied and said cryptocurrencies can be a plus for the financial system.
Speaking of Bitcoin, we’re sitting (basically) at a record for the 63-session correlation between daily changes in the Nasdaq 100 and space tokens (D.J. Kawa on the beat):
Oh, here’s some more Nasdaq/Bitcoin fun:
And speaking of cryptocurrencies, Trump says you’re not allowed to buy from Maduro and Aissami:
Read the full executive order issued by Trump banning U.S. purchases of Venezuelan cryptocurrency https://t.co/AAjejGufKW pic.twitter.com/WJ09FwJj33
— Bloomberg Crypto (@crypto) March 19, 2018
That was fun, can’t wait until the morrow.