Omi-Gone? Stocks Soar As Scariant & CPI Send Bonds, Bitcoin, & The Buck Lower On The Week

It has been two weeks since the deadly (no one has died anywhere in the world) new COVID variant – Omicron – and only The Dow has managed to shrug off the constant fearmongering and panicky policy-making to ‘slow the spread’ of this “mild” virus…

Small Caps are notably ugly since Omicron was unleashed on the world. But this week saw the S&P rip to its best week since February as Goldman’s melt-up appears to have come true…

Today was dominated by CPI – which printed at its hottest in 40 years but was modestly below the whisper number – and that sent yields lower (especially the short-end) and implicitly Nasdaq and S&P (growth) higher as Small Caps (value) lower. Everything went vertical in the last couple of minutes… just like last Friday…

A record close for the S&P 500

This week’s gains in stocks were ignited by a major short-squeeze in the first half of the week, but that faded as the week wore on…

Source: Bloomberg

Unprofitable tech stocks rallied for the first weekly gain in a month and biggest weekly gain since early October (but like ‘most shorted’ it was very much a tale of two halves)…

Source: Bloomberg

AAPL on the other hand appears destined for $3 trillion market cap…

Source: Bloomberg

Amid all the excitement, Defensives actually outperformed Cyclicals on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

VIX was clubbed like a baby seal this week, its biggest absolute weekly compression since February…

Source: Bloomberg

Overall, the bubble markets pumped and dumped this week…

Source: Bloomberg

The moves in VIX and bubble markets reminded us of this…

Bonds were monkeyhammered on the week with the long-end underperforming dramatically (early week saw a heavy corporate calendar)…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve steepened this week (for the first time in 5 weeks) by the most since January, but remains notably flatter since Omicron…

Source: Bloomberg

Today saw rate-hike odds shift lower (dovish) but a full rate-hike is still priced-in for June…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dollar ended the week lower, dropping back from unchanged today after CPI…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos were ugly this week with all the major coins down, but off the lows of last weekend’s flash crash. BTC ended -10%, ETH -4%…

Source: Bloomberg

Interesting in BTC today with a morning pump to tag $50k then the dump…

Source: Bloomberg

Best week for oil since August, snapping a 6-week losing streak

Gold managed very modest gains on the week while silver slipped lower…

Finally, a quick reminder that based on the current rate of unemployment and inflation, The Taylor Rule suggests Fed Funds should be over 9%…

Source: Bloomberg

Oh, and if The White House claims they have saved us all from high gas prices… and somehow this is the average price… tell them to f**k off – regular gasoline has only been higher in price at this time of year once – in 2012 – and even then it was pennies. Despite all the jawboning, gas prices at the pump are dramatically above the average price for this time of year…

Source: Bloomberg

So, apart from non-transitory inflation driving an ongoing collapse in real wages and the $3 trillion real cost of Biden’s BBB plan… everything is awesome?!