What a year the past week has been.
As Goldman's trading desk writes in its Friday EOD post-mortem, Friday was "a very quiet (welcomed) move higher today after a manic (panican) week" with overall market volumes of 19BN shares vs. the 26.7BN per day in the previous four session. Flows on the Goldman floor were more balanced, if shallower, with exhausted investors slower to react to headlines than in days prior (small short covering spurts, which line up with Goldman PB data from Thursday showing shorts being put back on following what was a record short covering day).
While it didn't feel like it (following last week's collapse) stocks closed notably higher this week: SPX +5.7%. NDX +7.4% (best week in 30 months), RTY +1.6%, even as "investors are left fatigued and stuck in an increasingly difficult trading environment" but the broader market fragility was most expressed this week in the long end of the treasury market (as yields on 10-year US Treasuries rose 48bps to ~4.47% this week alone amid basis trade unwinds and foreign selling). Bottom line, the stock market is not in the driver’s seat anymore, because according to Goldman, "USD lower + yields higher will continue to apply pressure on the S&P 500" while client feedback suggests "the 90-day pause in tariff implementation did little to boost investor sentiment."
