As Stocks Slump, Nomura Exposes What Levels Will ‘Trigger’ CTAs
With Quad Witch behind us and China’s Golden Week upon us, the regularly-scheduled “global growth scare” has taken front-page headlines (for now) and is sparking equity derisking as safe-haven flows have sent gold and bond (prices) higher.
And, as Nomura’s Charlie McElligott notes, while the ugly ISM miss was the short-term macro-catalyst, US equity markets are now testing levels where more technical forced selling will exaggerate the markets’ volatility.
1) A now much deeper and more sizeable “Short $Gamma” position for Dealers in both SPX (flipped “short” under 2978, with combined $Gamma of SPX / SPY at -$7.1B, just 11.7th %ile back to 2013) and Nasdaq (“flipped” short under 190.63, with $Gamma in QQQ of -$317.3mm, just 7.8th %ile since 2013)
2) We now see net “Negative $Delta” in index / ETF options now significant as well, with SPX / SPY at -$103.9B (15.6th %ile, flipped “negative” below 2962) and QQQ at -$7.4B (8.0th %ile, flipped “negative” below 191.45)
3) The final “escalation flow” comes from CTA Trend “triggers” being hit, as the Nomura CTA model estimates that both the S&P- and Nasdaq- futures positions would be DELEVERAGING / REDUCING from the prior “+100% Long” to now a “+54%” signal (the 3m window “flipped” short for both), with S&P selling on the closes below 2960 and Nasdaq selling below 7778 yesterday, which is likely some of the flow we seen going through the market now during the overnight / early hours session
Fleshing out CTA positioning in Global Equities futures and further triggers from here:
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SPX position would turn outright SHORT on a break lower and close below 2903 – yet would re-leverage back to “+100% Long” on a close above 2972
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For Nasdaq, the position would turn outright SHORT on a break lower and close below 7569 – yet would re-leverage back to “+100% Long” on a close above 7825
And across other asset classes…
Trade accordingly.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/02/2019 – 09:35
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2pdZ3KH Tyler Durden