1/x The market continues to try & shake out weak hands from overextended positioning by both HF & Retail...After a strong Vanna run up overnight, as expected, retail exuberance exploded on the open in the form of retail call buying, this fragility, paired w/a)Mean reverting flows

1/ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (Turn and face the strange)... as futures, sit pinned @ an odd elevated morning perch awaiting Janet Yellen’s confirmation hearing & her call for the new admin to ‘act big’...this narrative has markets on high. But the truth is that it’s actually just Gary

2/x behind the curtain, pulling the usual levers. Until Vixperation on Wed, it‘ll be nearly impossible to break the IVol oversupply. This pinning of IVol was so strong on Fri that despite a peak to trough drop of nearly -2% in SPX, fixed strike straddle were down across the board

3/x & particularly decimated in the very front of the curve. IVol particularly in the 30 day range is showing dramatic signs of oversupply relative to the rest of the IVol surface, giving a nod to the Vix strip driving the compression. Even during windows of vanna weakness as we

4/x are in now, this oversupply phenomenon paired w/ a market decline & a slide to higher fixed strike IVols can still lead to a temporary ‘Dead Cat Bounce’ where residual Vanna/charm morning flows lead to brief AM market support. These supporting flows are generally just strong

5/x enough for a countertrend thrust &, unable to meaningfully impact more important macro flows & hence generally should be faded starting around 9-10am CST. That said Gary’ll likely see to it that there is no major technical break below 1 stdev in the 20 days, likely preventing

1/x ‘Twas the night before Christmas & all through the market not an order was stirring not even for $TGT.
The bonuses were entered into payroll with care,
In hopes that next year would bring a similar fare;
The Bulls were nestled all snug in their beds;

2/x While visions of $TSLA danced in their heads;
& Biden in his Covid mask, & Powell with his still flowing money tap,
Had just settled their brains for a long winter's nap,
When out on the screen there arose such a clatter,
All sprang from their beds to see what was the matter.

3/x Away to their monitors they flew like a flash,
Tore open their Bloombergs & threw up the dash(board).
The S. Claus rally in markets, that all of us know,
Paired w/vaccine reopening, Gave a bid to the market, leaving old prices below,
When what to their wondering👀 did appear?

4/x But a Georgia runoff rushing up to them with complacency, not fear...
With once reliable Vanna flows no longer lively & quick,
They knew in a moment the markets might get quite sick...
Unexpected, 2 Georgia Dem peaches into Congress they came,

5/x Whistling & shouting they called for more fiscal, ‘CARES Too’ its new name:
"Now, Healthcare! Now, Infrastructure! Now Green Energy & Protectionism!
On, Labor rights! on, Minimum Wage! on, Basic Income & Populism!
To middle class households, To the poorest of them all!

1/x The window we have been targeting for 2 months has officially opened... i Can not imagine a more textbook display of the power of Vanna at expiration as we saw on Friday. The capital building was overrun by an insurrection, but all that that meant was a bigger late day rally.

2/x that ended at ATH on the close. Between Gary the 🦍 & his RVol suppression & his hand off to late day Ivol compression & the Vanna index bid, the 🐻’s never had a chance... but Gary’s getting tired after 2 months battling complacency & Vanna’s 2 week vacation, 1 of her only

3/x 2 week departures of the year (a 5 week OpEx) is quickly approaching on 1/15 morning. That means she’ll be increasingly absent as she prepares for her trip. W/ a $59 1 week straddle & $50 1 day range on Friday, & another $30 overnight drop, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t

4/x want to take a chance on a little long gamma at this juncture. Especially given the obvious warning signs coming from the steepening of the yield curve, underperformance of the Growth complex, complacency in sentiment & positioning, anecdotal signs of bubbles in BTC & TSLA,

5/x NTM the growing exuberance surrounding a fiscal stimulus deal near $2 Trillion. The wall of worry of 3 months ago is gone. The vaccine is being deployed, the election is resolved, fiscal stimulus was passed & w/2 Georgia 🍑 🍑, ever moar 🚁💰is on the way. But what happened

What happens with the limited volumes of food aid that are sent to Tigray?

Testimonies on aid to the war-affected Tigray &

Shire: 7 kg of wheat were required to sign for 15 kg. If they refused to sign for 15 kg they were denied the 7 kg

IDPs in Shire: Currently around 80 000 displaced Tigrayans in Shire, spread across three different schools

Addi Da’iro: “Residents were denied food aid after the inhabitants refused to appoint PP officials as administrators. The residents demanded the evacuation of Eritrean soldiers instead.”

Aksum: "I heard there have been food aid of 15 kg of grain per family, and only once. Neither I, nor my relatives have received aid. No idea about how many families received that 15 kg of food aid. How many days would that last? Who takes the rest? Of course, the Eritreans?”

Adwa: “Last time, they made us sign 15 kg while giving only 7 kg”.

THREAD on how economically Muslims maybe poorer (the state is overall also not as rich) in #Bengal but have relatively got socio-political empowerment (part of Threads I am writing for the understanding of Bengal politics in the context of upcoming assembly election):

1/20

The socio-economic status of Muslims in the state is far behind other communities as the Sachar Committee Report (2006) and Pratichi-SNAP’s “Living Reality of Muslims in West Bengal” (2016) attest.

2/20

But it has not witnessed the rule of the BJP yet although the founder of the predecessor of the saffron party, Bharatiya Jan-Sangh, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was himself a Bengali.

3/20

During both the Congress and the Left Front rule earlier, and now under TMC Muslims did get some leverage although political marginalization even at block level had continued.

4/20

Across India, the last two general elections, and even the recent Bihar assembly elections, have resulted in the further marginalization of Muslims.

5/20

"Hello, IT? My economy has stopped working."

"Have you tried -"

"Yes."

"Okay. Check settings. What does it say under software?"

"Compatible with EU membership."

"Do you have that?"

"I just uninstalled it."

"Er - Why?"

"Honestly, I can't remember. Something about fish?"

"Is your fish industry running okay?"

"No, actually that was the first app to crash."

"You see, that one really needs the EU platform installed."

"Really? But my mate told me fishing would run better without it."

"He sounds confused. Can you reinstall your EU app?"

"What about this app my mate gave me instead? It's called Sovereignty 45."

"Mate, don't touch that. It's malware. It'll reduce your economy down to the levels of 1945."

"But those were the glory years! Weren't they?"

"Mate, when were you born?"

"1960. Why?”

“You have also installed the Hostile Environment firewall which is limiting the capacity of other systems”

"But my mate said those things stop viruses."

"Is your mate's name Nigel by any chance?"

"Yes! How did you -"

"Another wild stab. Those aren't viruses, they are EU workers, and they are vital to the smooth running of your systems."

"But I clicked on a pop-up that said it would get rid of them all for me."

I’m beginning to think that the left has been too obsessed with GDP as a broken economic metric governing the global shitshow, when inflation is more insidious. Deflation may be a more radical demand than degrowth. Burst bubbles. Deflate the price of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s amazing just how much political economy is still determined by the threat of stagflation. This has created a weird metonymy in which as long as you’re fight inflation (preserving the interests of (older) savers) you’re also fighting stagnation (supporting (younger) earners).

To some extent the residual fear of deflationary spirals lies behind this, waiting in the wings for any suggestion that stagnation must be fought with deflation. This is entirely understandable, as uncontrolled deflation hits the poorest hardest.

The assumption that conjoins these fears into an engine of unbridled economic stagnation is that there’s a unitary market effectively mediating between the markets in different sectors, be this unity micro-economic or macro-economic in flavour. But this just isn’t how it works.

There is so much more logistic friction in the price system than the popular story of just in time production suggests, not least in the concrete details of differentiated trade between economic actors from local businesses to nation states.