In one of the most chaotic market sessions of the year, the S&P500 went from a 52-week high to a 10-day low in a few hours. Here's why.
Thursday was supposed to be a quiet session as market participants awaited the very important March jobs report, which will be released Friday morning. Instead, it turned into one of the most chaotic market sessions of the year.
The day started with a gap-up open mainly due to chatter that there is weakness in the job market and that there is a good likelihood that the March jobs news may be softer than expected and trigger a Fed rate cut in June. It was a questionable premise, but it created a little squeeze action and some underlying support.
Later in the day, headlines hit that Fed member Kashkari commented that “if inflation continues to move sideways, it makes me wonder if we should cut rates at all this year.” This isn’t the first hawkish comment from a Fed member, and it probably wouldn’t have had too much of an impact, but then some other more dramatic news hit.
In Tel Aviv, Israel, residents were confused when their GPS applications showed that they were located in Lebanon. The reason was that the Israeli military was scrambling GPS signals in preparation for a possible drone attack by Iran. Reports circulated that Israel sees indications that Iran may launch missile/drone attacks from Iranian territory, possibly on Friday. Israeli officials informed the U.S. that an Iranian attack would trigger a response.
This news caused oil to spike higher, defense contractors to rally, and the market to sell steadily into the close.
The S&P 500 went from a 52-week high to a 10-day low in a matter of a few hours. This has only happened four other times before, according to Jason Goepfert.
It was a dramatic shift and caught almost everyone by surprise. Sharp intraday reversals are often major turning points.
We still have the jobs news to deal with Friday morning, and we will see if there actually is an attack on Israel, but the market is now very unsettled. Volatility has spiked, and there should be a major shift in sentiment as a result of this action.
I’ll have more in the morning prior to the jobs news, but that report now has the capacity to accelerate a correction that has been anticipated for several months.
Have a good evening. I’ll see you Friday.
Kashkari started speaking at 2pm, when the markets were already crashing. Also, the US10Y did not shoot up but dropped instead.
Copypasta