With the wind down of the record 2014 trading slump now in its final days (although judging by volumes throughout the year one may have a difficult time noticing just when the holidays began and ended), the already entertaining zero-liquidity market moves are sure to provide further amusement today in the context of the US economic data bonanza on deck, which includes Durable Goods, GDP, Personal Income and Spending, Richmond Fed, UMich, and New Home Sales. Beat or miss, all of the above are guaranteed to send the S&P to higher recorder highs because in the multiple-expansion euphoria blow-off top phase nobody cares about such trivia as fundamentals or the economy, especially when Japan and Germany are about to monetize all of their gross issuance. Just remember to occasionally keep an eye on the preferred rigging correlation pairs: the USDJPY and the VIX, whose every illiquid jerk will be followed by Citadel & NYFed’s algos tic for tic.
As we enter further into the festive period, things are particularly quiet from a European perspective with most EU indices trading in the green with the exception of the FTSE MIB and IBEX who trade relatively unchanged amid a lack of pertinent newsflow. The main outlier in Europe is the Athens stock exchange which trades lower with losses of just under 2% ahead of the second round of voting in the Greek Presidential elections. Today we saw that Stavros Dimas is unable to secure the required 200 votes for a majority in the second presidential vote round, getting just 168 of the 200 votes needed. And now we await the third round of votes where the threshold will be lowered to 180. If Dimas fall short of this level then it will trigger snap elections which would favour the anti-euro far-left Syriza party.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 12/23/2014.
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