The Whites Of Their Eyes.

Once again, trade tensions were front and center for markets, although on Tuesday, risk sentiment improved a bit compared to what was a truly rough start to the week on Monday.

U.S. equities rebounded and the Russell and Nasdaq outperformed, but the bottom line is that nobody knows what’s going on. Just ask CNBC, a network that knows something about what it means to not know anything:

If it wasn’t a trade “war” before, it damn sure is now. This afternoon, reports suggested Canada is all set to implement quotas and tariffs designed to protect the country from dumping that might accompany efforts to send steel that would have otherwise gone to the U.S. to other markets. That’s an example of the dominos starting to fall and as Bloomberg notes, “any additional tariffs enacted on foreign steel will have a ripple effect on the Canadian economy and raise costs in the already-crunched housing sector.”

Stelco jumped on the news:

Crude soared on renewed concerns about Iran (more here):

The dollar was higher on the day despite crude’s rally:

Gold is hapless – six-month low (sorry doomsday crowd!):

Here are some lines for the line fans:

Financials are riding their longest losing streak in history, with the index falling for a 12th consecutive day on Tuesday before trimming losses.

And while there are obviously concerns about the flattening curve, maybe don’t get too ahead of yourself. The relative performance of the bank index is actually negatively correlated with the 2s10s:

rn, the relative performance of U.S. banks is *negatively* correlated with 2s10s (just barely!) pic.twitter.com/AdVxNZpn3Y

— Luke Kawa (@LJKawa) June 26, 2018

European banks are on the verge of falling into a bear market:

Emerging market equities are sitting at their lowest levels since August and are down more than 16% from their January highs:

The Shanghai Composite officially fell into a bear market on Tuesday as trade frictions exacerbate concerns about a decelerating economy:

Worst month for the index since January 2016:

Finally, for your moment of zen, “the moron doth protest too much, methinks“, because these are both lies – the wall is literally just 8 prototypes gathering dust in the desert…

TRUMP repeatedly lies: "We started the wall, we're spending a lot of energy & time & started up in San Diego. It's under construction now. We have $1.6 billion, but we're going to ask for an increase in wall spending so we can finish it quicker" (Wall construction hasn't started) pic.twitter.com/SFZhlxzX3p

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 26, 2018

Pres. Trump: "It's not 'Build that wall' anymore. It's 'Continue building that wall.' Because we're building it." https://t.co/auEhv49hrn pic.twitter.com/XeI0MZE1VS

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 26, 2018