Truly Fine Gentlemen.

Well, as documented (and lampooned) extensively in our week ahead preview, Shinzo Abe arrives at Mar-a-Lago today and Trump is stoked:

Getting ready to meet Prime Minister Abe of Japan, a truly fine gentleman!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2018

Here it is:

Don’t worry, world. TPP should be renegotiated shortly and the North Korea problem will be all sorted out in no time. What? Can’t you tell?

 

Speaking of “truly fine gentlemen”, here’s what the guy Michael Cohen sent to threaten Stormy Daniels looks like, according to a sketch:

Needless to say, that’s all kinds of silly and it was received as such on Twitter, where netizens immediately fingered Tom Brady as the likely culprit. It’s also possible it’s Melania:

pic.twitter.com/4JiWjVM4gF

— Nicola Duke (@NicTrades) April 17, 2018

And I mean, just take a second to appreciate that this comes just a day after we learned that Cohen represents Sean Hannity (another “truly fine gentleman”). This whole thing is so goddamn absurd that it boggles the mind and it seems like there’s no end in sight.

Stocks were up again, with the Nasdaq pacing gains (Netflix was a big winner). S&P has now cleared 2,700 if you’re into round numbers:

14 handle for the VIX (we’re a long way from 50), which is still trying to catch back down the FX vol., where there’s no sign of that trade war:

Speaking of vol., the CBOE EM ETF Volatility index has collapsed steadily over the past couple of weeks:

30Y yields fell below 3% on Tuesday…

…as the 5s30s flattened for an eight consecutive day to 32bp.

Goldman turned in solid results that tipped a revival in trading, but the buyback suspension news wasn’t great and generally speaking, it seems like the banks are succumbing to a “sell the news” trade around earnings:

There were more Russia sanctions headlines a day after Trump embarrassed Nikki Haley by effectively calling her a liar. On Tuesday it was Kudlow with this:

• U.S. CONSIDERING ADDITIONAL RUSSIA SANCTIONS, KUDLOW SAYS

You can see when that hit pretty clearly:

And here’s a two-day chart of the Russia ETF:

The lira came under renewed pressure on news that early elections are possible (more here):

Tough day for Tesla as the bad press just keeps on comin’.

TESLA SUSPENDS MODEL 3 ASSEMBLY LINE FOR 4-5 DAYS: BUZZFEED

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) April 16, 2018

That hit last night and on Tuesday, Bernstein said another capital raise is likely unless Elon can manage to get opex or capex spend under control. It’s been a rough week so far:

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is embarking on a “fact-finding inquiry” into the practices of cryptocurrency exchanges. He sent letters to 13 platforms asking for disclosures on their operations, use of bots, conflicts of interest, outages, and other matters. Bitcoin flash crashed just after 3 New York time:

Finally, add this one to the archive:

.@POTUS meets with Prime Minister of Japan @AbeShinzo today at Mar-a-lago to discuss N. Korea and trade. pic.twitter.com/PeyWKPUyjG

— Kayleigh McEnany 45 Archived (@PressSec45) April 17, 2018