<p>In the past year we’ve seen the implosions of:</p><ul><li>NFTs</li><li>Meme stocks</li><li>Crypto</li><li>Tech stocks</li></ul><p>With that, you would think retail traders would sober up. Instead, they’ve switched from hard liquor to crack cocaine in the of ultra-short-dated equity options. Here’s a chart from Goldman Sachs showing that 44% of SPX volume in the third and fourth quarter (so far) has been in options with less than 24 hours to expiration.</p><p>Today is quad witching so it makes me skeptical of price action but there’s also a bigger picture story here and it ends badly.</p><p>Whatever happened to investing?</p>

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

<ul><li>Seeing tentative signs that inflation rises are stabilizing; not calling a peak </li><li>Expects Fed to hike by more than its median forecast</li><li>It will take time for inflation to ebb</li></ul><p>Mester spoke on Bloomberg TV. </p><p>The Fed is going to spend the next month pushing back against the bond market. We’ll see who wins but the bond market is showing a lot of confidence so far.</p>

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

<p>It was a busy week and one of the things I missed was a <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://t.co/die4859YAs“ target=“_blank“ rel=“nofollow“>report </a>from the Philadelphia Fed’s research department that questioned non-farm payrolls numbers.</p><p>The report focuses on the March-June period and compares the comprehensive quarterly data against the usual monthly release. It’s not a small change:</p><blockquote>In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES [non-farm payrolls report] estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period. </blockquote><p>Said another way, non-farm payrolls were nearly nil from March-June.</p><p>Now some of those jobs appear to have been pushed to earlier periods so it’s not as bad as it seems but if the Fed is concerned with trajectory, then there might be more slowing than the monthly jobs reports have indicated.</p>

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

<ul><li>Will keep liquidity reasonably ample</li><li style=““ class=“text-align-justify“>To better coordinate epidemic prevention and control, social and economic development</li><li style=““ class=“text-align-justify“>Will step up macro economic adjustments, strengthen policy coordination</li><li style=““ class=“text-align-justify“>Will expand domestic demand, prioritise consumption recovery</li></ul><p>This of course comes after the two-day Central Economic Work Conference, with the state media citing remarks from China president Xi Jinping. These are all very on the surface as you would expect and they don’t show much deviation in terms of policy strategy from China. The headline is an interesting one though as it omits the phrase ‚prudent‘ and instead now puts emphasis on monetary policy being ‚precise‘ and ‚forceful‘. Let’s see if future remarks will adopt a similar wording.</p>

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.