After All That Hype.

We’ll end the week where we began it – with this BofAML header:

As a reminder, this was my assessment of that from Monday morning:

Spoiler alert: almost certainly not.

And that’s not to downplay the long list of important scheduled events. Rather, it’s just to say that invariably, scheduled events never end up being the ones that matter unless those scheduled events are elections.

Fast forward to Friday and as Bloomberg’s David Wilson writes, “the S&P 500’s range for the week stands at 1.07 percentage points, the narrowest of the year, defying not only the event risk but also the higher volatility of the past few months.”

Sentiment was of course dented to close the week as Trump went ahead with tariffs on China and China responded in kind, just as they said they would. See here, here and here.

The dollar is hovering near 11-month highs thanks in no small part to the ECB, whose dovish take on an otherwise hawkish message tanked the euro on Thursday:

Challenge: spot the moment the ECB statement hit:

Some context for 10Y yields going back to the flash rally in Treasurys that accompanied the Brazilian real plunge two Thursdays ago and the early morning Apple supplier headline from last Friday:

Italian stocks snapped a five-week losing streak:

BTP-bund spread tightened notably:

European bank stocks fell with the rest of Europe on Friday as Trump’s China tariffs underscored trade tensions. The ECB’s dovish stance doesn’t exactly scream “buy” for the financials, which underperformed the broader market on the week in Europe:

Oil tumbled on Friday as all eyes turn to OPEC:

It was a rocky week for some EM currencies as the hawkish Fed hike and idiosyncratic risk from Ankara to Buenos Aires weighed on sentiment.

MSCI EM Currency Index is sitting at a six-month low:

EEM six-month low and looking for more:

The Argentine peso was of course front and center, careening to fresh all-time low after fresh all-time low. On Friday, a hurried shuffle at the central bank brought some fleeting respite, but by the time it was all said and done, the peso closed at a new record low. Things are bad:

The infamous century bonds are fucked:

With yields soaring to all-time highs (and for reference, at 9% that’s above the average for U.S. CCCs):

The Brazilian real was in the spotlight this week as well as the central bank fought to make good on last week’s promises to flood the market with dollars. After losing control on Thursday, BCB finally got a handle on things to close the week (and that’s reminiscent of last week when Thursday’s harrowing plunge towards 4.00 USD was followed by a furious Friday rally):

Ultimately, BCB did end up selling all of the $24.5 billion in swaps it pledged on June 7. They broke their own record on Friday, with $5.75 billion in a single day.

Oh, and Chinese stocks are sitting at the lowest since 2016:

Finally, for your moment of zen, witness abject buffoonery…

President @realDonaldTrump: "You've gotta watch @CNN, what a fraud it is."@SteveDoocy: "They're listening, they're right behind you."@POTUS: "That's fine." pic.twitter.com/FVpgbWMBY4

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 15, 2018