by ZeroHedge News Staff at ZeroHedge
What started off as another ugly day with stocks tumbling and yields surging following yesterday’s VaR-shock inducing CPI print, quickly reversed after the market – in its infinite stupidity – took what was a hot PPI print (core PPI came in at 2.4% vs Exp. 2.2% and up from 2.0%) but which the Biden BLS massaged just enough to make it appear that headline PPI actually missed (coming at 2.1% vs exp 2.2%), on what we earlier showed was blatant (and literal) gas-lighting, as the entire miss was the result of seasonal adjustments to gasoline prices which “dropped” by 3.6% even though they actually rose 6.3% to the highest level in 6 months.
And while anyone with half a brain could quickly see through the PPI bezzle, that clearly did not apply to the algos, such as this one…
… who instead ramped spoos and even though a few of them realized just how stupid the initial move had been and dumped the kneejerk ramp, the remainder – even dumber – went with the flow and shortly after the cash open, stocks went on one of their trademark diagonal ramps higher…
… or maybe it wasn’t the algos, but rather 0DTE mean-reversion momos, who took advantage of the reversal in the first post-PPI kneejerk move and ramped momentum up in a one-way all day trade, via both 0DTE and total option delta, which was enough to drag the broader market higher…