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Return Of The Growth Scare
The growth scare's back.
Wall Street stumbled (hard) out of the gate at the beginning of what, historically, is the worst month of the year for US equities.
The proximate cause of investor consternation was another lackluster ISM manufacturing update. The poor read on US factory activity stoked hard landing fears anew ahead of Friday's "make or break" jobs report. (Note the scare quotes. They're all "make or break" if you ask the financial media.)
The S&P trundled into the US afternoon on
To this old watcher, the price action in stocks late last month was puzzling. Volatility had crumbled and McElligot & other algo watchers spoke of buying that had just been done by the CTA guys and the promise of tens of billions more by the vol control funds if vols just stayed quiet for a few more days. Both crews were replenishing what they pitched during the early month “vol crisis”.
These multi-billion-dollar estimates were no secret, at least to larger fund managers, so why was the market trading so heavy? I asked you folks that here and pondered if we were seeing some sort of “whale” selling large amounts into the bid. (A whale on the lines of the Softbank Whale back in the summer of 2020.)
I’m still wondering.