Rekt Mkts: Crypto continues to surge

Feels weird to say this but all the focus is well and truly on crypto right now while the vol seems to have been sapped out of equities towards the end of summer. My gut says that stocks can keep edging higher through the last week of August and then September becomes an entirely new story, heavily anchored to payrolls.

SPX fell 0.9% yday and NDQ lost 0.7%, but SPX recovered roughly 0.4% and NDQ gained around 0.3%.. Buyers certainly had another go, although it was not exactly a total breakout. The problem remains bonds. The 5Y rose roughly 4bps to 4.42%, the 10Y added around 4bps to 4.74% and the 30Y gained roughly 4bps to 5.28%. Treasury has announced it will at least double the maximum size of its longer-dated liquidity support buybacks from $2bn to $4bn per operation from September, but the long end refusing to rally tells you the market sees help rather than a cure. Gold ripped 3.4% to around $4,670, while WTI fell roughly 1.3% to $86.72 but remains expensive. Plain English: the mkt still wants to buy risk, but bonds and gold are refusing to give a clean all-clear. Payrolls is the next proper test. Until then I think underexposure and liquidity support can keep the squeeze alive, but a 10Y above 4.70% is a fairly obvious limit on how comfortable I think you can get.

Generally a quiet day in the names I'm tracking..in Korea we saw strong performances from SK Hynix and Samsung, up around 2-3%, while memory in the US was a bit more muted with MU, SNDK closing roughly unchanged despite a move higher in indices - I suppose that could be a reversal of what we saw yesterday. Allegedly Citadel are now fully out of their Situational Awareness risk...unreal trade for them but it makes me think general positioning there should be much cleaner. Stocks have had a strong rebound but as we once again sit at the top of the range it remains to be seen if we see any follow through or not - for me I do think the lack of catalysts for the final few days of August means we can continue to grind higher and seems like the market has shown its hand. I'm happy holding risk at these levels and have an eye to add on dips but also sell strength...buy low sell high and become a hero.

Crypto has gone from waking up to truly accelerating. BTC is around $77.4k and up 6.4% over 24 hours, ETH is near $2,441 and up 4.9%, while SOL is around $91.75 and up 5%. HYPE is also up 2.9% near $75.25 having hit ATHs of 77. Honestly I'm not really sure what's causing crypto to squeeze so aggressively but it's certainly nice to see that other buyers (or even market participants) who are not Michael Saylor get involved. Clearly there's been a tonne of short liquidations and squeezes, but I'm curious to see what happens on a fundamental angle with a few things from a regulatory aspect waiting in the wings. I'm not smart enough to say with certainty that we have "seen the lows", but the probability of that being the case is definitely increasing. The thing I think is really interesting to watch out for here is ETH...when ETH runs it reprices a LOT of things and I think active coins on L2s (ie RobinHood) can gap up very quickly and you just need to look at the +20% move in $PEPE to realise what an impact it can have, or even the move in $REKT over the past 3 days. I do really believe we are seeing an increasing number of datapoints to suggest that "crypto" is back and at the very least I think it's important to pay attention to. Good luck and touch some grass this weekend.