A Brief Reprieve (God Blesh Ush, Everyone)

Thursday felt like a bit of a reprieve from the past couple of days as the tech selloff abated and outside of Bitcoin, nothing too outlandish happened.

The S&P snapped a four-day losing streak and the Nasdaq outperformed again, perhaps easing concerns about the tech rout (note: small-caps outperformed as well):

If you’re keeping track of how things have unfolded since the tech selloff last week this is amusing:

The curve reversed early flattening thanks in part to reports that Trump is set to put out something on infrastructure in January.

• TRUMP IS SAID TO READY INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN FOR JANUARY RELEASE

That should be funny. Remember, his last press conference on infrastructure devolved into a shouting match with reporters about Thomas Jefferson’s slaves. That headline hit at 2:00-ish and you can see Treasurys move lower and the dollar climb:

Fourth day in a row of gains for the greenback:

Despite this afternoon’s steepening, there’s no escaping the inevitable:

Folks are bearish on gold ahead of the Fed and amid dollar strength tied to the tax plan. The most recent Bloomberg survey shows investors are the most bearish since at least April 2015.

• Bullish: 2 Bearish: 8 Neutral: 3

Gold is sitting at a four-month low and is on pace for its largest weekly decline since July:

The pound got a (much needed) reprieve on Thursday afternoon, spiking on a report that the U.K. and Ireland are close to striking a border deal:

Not a good day for Brazil as stocks and the real were hit hard on pension overhaul jitters:

Haven’t mentioned the Aussie in a while, but it’s at a six-month low:

Oh, and this is hilarious. According to Cowen, Amazon is set to save $723 million in 2018 and $1.3 billion in 2019 under Trump’s tax bill. All told, the company could end up getting a 24% boost to earnings in each of those years. Meanwhile, Facebook and Alphabet could see an 8% EPS upside. This assumes the U.S. corporate rate goes to 22% on January 1. As usual, “there’s a tweet for that”:

Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017

Obviously, Bitcoin was the story (again). One day after blowing through three round numbers ($12,000, $13,000, and $14,000), it crossed $15,000 and $16,000 and $17,000 and $18,000 and then $19,000 (depending on where you’re tracking this thing) only to careen lower by a truly absurd $4,000 amid a series of outages and performance issues across platforms:

Keep in mind: that is a goddamn two-day chart.

“People are looking at a video game as a regular market. And it’s clearly not, otherwise it wouldn’t be where it is already,” Walter Zimmerman, a technical analyst at ICAP TA told FT, adding that this is “beyond abnormal, it’s unprecedented. Every other commodity has natural sellers.”

Finally, your moment of zen: “God blesh these shhates, shank you very mush”