After two days of bloodbathery in the most-shorted stocks, today was some relief (or a dead cat bounce)?

Source: Bloomberg

With KOSS, AMC, and BBBY all up (GME gave back most of its gains)…

Source: Bloomberg

And notably, the hedge fund VIP stocks also rose along with the most-shorted…

Source: Bloomberg

Maybe it’s time to stop ‘playing the game’ for a little bit…

The broad market was mixed with the cash open seeing selling, then a bounce back into the last hour, before another weaker close… Nasdaq was the day’s biggest laggard as Small Caps managed to hold gains…

Energy stocks continued their resurgence (after fading into the end of January); Healthcare is the laggard this week…

Source: Bloomberg

After AMZN and GOOGL earnings last night, FANG stocks opened notably higher but were sold significantly into the close…

Source: Bloomberg

KODK was the craziest stock stoday…

Treasury yields rose on the day – we suspect more of the same rate-locks and rotation into a heavy calendar, rather than any ‘growth’ unwinds…

Source: Bloomberg

The 5s30s curve soared to its steepest since 2015…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dollar ended marginally higher on the day…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos were all higher on the day with Ether leading the charge,

Source: Bloomberg

… breaking to a new record high above $1650

Source: Bloomberg

And Bitcoin topped $37k again…

Source: Bloomberg

Which left ETH at its highest relative to BTC since August 2018…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI surged intraday to top $56, but faded back into the close…

Silver also bounced today but remains below Friday’s close…

But gold was flat…

Finally, we note that while stocks remain at or near record highs and everyone’s excited, there appears to be much uncertainty under the covers with VIX (while down from recent spike highs) remaining almost unprecedentedly high compared to the record highs in stocks. As Bloomberg’s Elena Popina notes, it’s rare to see this VIX mismatch (high VIX and record high stocks)…

Source: Bloomberg

And implied vols are at almost unprecedented highs relative to realized vol…

Source: Bloomberg

The so-called fear gauge remains 30% above its long-term average, and the volatility curve implies elevated uncertainty for months to come.