Mega-Cap Meltdown Continues As ‘Good News’ Sends Rate-Cut Hopes Reeling

KC Fed survey joined yesterday’s Regional Fed surveys in the doldrums (as did today’s plunge in durable goods orders) but of course, all eyes were sternly focused on Q2 GDP’s beat.

That ‘good news’ sparked a hawkish shift lower in rate-cut expectations…

Source: Bloomberg

The Nasdaq lagged..again.. with Small Caps ripping higher. The S&P ended red again with The Dow clinging to gains…

Nasdaq has underperformed Russell 2000 for 11 of the last 12 days, erasing YTD outperformance for the big-tech index

Source: Bloomberg

This is the biggest relative underperformance of the Nasdaq vs Russell 2000 since the peak of the dotcom boom…

Source: Bloomberg

Small Caps were helped by a massive (almost 5%) short-squeeze today…

Source: Bloomberg

Mag7 stocks ended lower but bounced back off the initial puke…

Source: Bloomberg

The S&P 500 found support almost perfectly at its 50DMA (5433), bounced, then fell back below it again…

Nasdaq also bounced off its 100DMA yesterday, and faded back towards it today…

Goldman Sachs trading desk noted that they saw the first buy-skew in a few days with our floor tilting +3% net to buy. Volumes tracking +25% vs the trailing 20days and ETFs capturing 30% of the overall tape.

LOs buying Fins + Cons Discretionary vs selling Tech and Hcare though much less risk-off than yday. Yesterday’s sell off was mostly asset managers and today we are back to a true blend. 

HFs buying Tech, Discretionary, and Hcare vs selling Fins + Industrials. Interesting to note liquidity continues to be poor, tracking -30% vs the trailing 20 days.

Equity risk is back up at its highest since April, but bond vol remains muted… for now…

“It does seem that an unwinding has begun of popular trades that brought valuations to stupid levels,” Louis-Vincent Gave, chief executive officer of Gavekal Research, wrote in a note to clients.

Mixed day for bonds with the short-end underperforming (2Y +1bps, 30Y -5bps) reversing some of the recent very aggressive steepening of the curve…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar chopped around like a penny stock today…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold was hit again, finding support at $2350…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin slipped lower, finding support at around $64,000…

Source: Bloomberg

But ETH dramatically lagged BTC, erasing most of the post-May ‘buy the ETF rumor’ gains…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices bounced back to unchanged on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, there’s more room to run. SPX: over the last ~100 years, median year has a SPX peak to trough drawdown of 13%. Believe it or not only been 4% which a typical drawdown taking us to 4900…

NDX: median drawdown is 16% or around another 9% from here based on last 40 calendar years – would put you at the ~1700 level…

But hey, we bounced today, so everything is awesome, right?