Everything was going great on Tuesday right up until the cash open on Wall Street.
A fleeting move higher after the opening bell seemed to suggest u.s. equities were all set to explode to the upside after an exuberant overnight session in Asia, but alas, it was not to be. In fact, it was all downhill from there:
We did hit 26,000 on the Dow briefly. That would be just 12 calendar days after 25,000, the shortest time between 1,000-point meaningless “milestones” ever.
At one point, the Dow was up 283 points before sinking into the red just after 2:00 ET:
Cue Picard:
DJIA TURNS NEGATIVE, WAS UP 283 POINTS pic.twitter.com/R8SMv2Wu7v
— Walter White (@heisenbergrpt) January 16, 2018
Volatility made a rare cameo:
If you were looking for another sign of peak bullishness, look no further than the following which shows that people are paying up “bigly” for calls relative to puts (and by “bigly”, we mean a skew that's two standard deviations below its five year average):
The greed isn't quite as egregious in big-cap tech:
(“D.J. LK on the beat“)
Treasurys chopped around but ultimately, the curve was flatter with the 5s30s inside of 48bps.
The beleaguered dollar tried to bounce back, but after rallying for the first time in five sessions, it fell apart as the euro rally resumed. Obviously, the possibility that Trump's hardline on immigration ends up triggering a U.S. government shutdown at the end of this week is weighing on sentiment:
European shares faded gains into the close as U.S. shares lost momentum:
Cryptos were an absolute nightmare as a renewed China crackdown conspired with ongoing jitters about South Korea to drive the entire space sharply lower with Ripple getting hit particularly hard:
