“The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.” – Ben Bernanke

Futures are looking to bounce back from yesterday’s weakness, but it’s still early and there are a lot of events on the horizon for today.  St. Louis Fed President James Bullard will be speaking right at the open and then a half-hour later, Fed Chair Powell will be testifying in front of a House Panel.  Then at 2 PM, we’ll get the release of the Fed’s Beige Book. The only economic indicator of note today was the ADP Private Payrolls report which came in higher than expected.  More noteworthy, though, was the 800K positive revision to last month’s report.

News on the Russia-Ukraine front has been relatively quiet.  Nothing much new to speak of, but the Russian shelling of Ukrainian targets has continued.

Read today’s Morning Lineup for a recap of all the major market news and events from around the world, including the latest US and international COVID trends.

Yesterday, we highlighted the fact that the Nasdaq 100 has traded in an intraday range of over 1% every day this year.  Yesterday, another shorter but pretty incredible streak also came to an end as it was the first time since 2/18 that QQQ was not up and down at least 0.5% in the same trading session.  Swings from intraday gains of at least 0.5% to intraday losses of 0.5% (or in the opposite order) on an intraday basis indicate a volatile session, and five trading days in a row indicates extreme volatility and uncertainty.

The chart below shows historical streaks where QQQ saw intraday gains and losses of 0.5% in the same trading session.  At five trading days, the streak that just ended is tied for the longest since February 2008 (six trading days), but it was well off the record of 18 trading days back in October 2000 – a period where there were multiple streaks with 0.5% intraday swings between gains and losses.

Looking at all the dates shown, though, the thing that stands out is that these types of streaks aren’t common, and they have only been seen during periods where the market was in a period of varying degrees of crisis.