Late-Day Let-Down Spoils NASDAQ Party As Bonds & Bullion Bid

Energized by a lower crude oil price – and collapsing JPY – equity markets hit their highs shortly after 8pmET on Sunday night, trod water thorugh the Asian and European markets and started more aggressive selling once US cash markets opened. Coincidentally (or not) when Obama started speaking around 1445ET, US equities took a dramatic dive – catching down to an already weaker signaling VIX rally. EURJPY stayed in sync through all of this priming ignition pumps right into the close as NASDAQ 4,000 close was desperately needed (but the dot-com darlings were all hit). Gold and Silver's early monkey-hammering was met with buyers which lifted then up 0.5% and 0.8% respectively on the day (and 2% off their lows). WTI crude recovered more than half of its losses (-0.6% on the day) but Brent not so much as the spread broke to new 8 month highs. VIX closed higher and Treasury yields trended lower all day from the overnight open to close practically unchanged as the USD lost half its early gains to end +0.25%.

Unclear what the catalyst for the mid-afternoon dump in stocks was – pre-emptive month-end rebalancing? Obama? something in precious metals?

Commodities early smackdown saw a number of bid surges up during the day around the US open, EU close, and before the equit market began to roll over…