Volatility Pulse - Memory Loss
Four Tickers, 20% Of The Tape
MU, AMD, INTC and SNDK accounted for ~20% of all single-stock notional traded Tuesday. The entire option-skew leaderboard for NDX names is just chips and memory. The S&P is ripping on a needle.
Source: Bloomberg
DRAM ETF Up 67% In One Month
The Roundhill memory ETF launched April 5 and is already +66.75% — 9 names total, 48% Hynix and Samsung. AUM $3B in 30 days. EWY (the "diversified" Korea ETF) is 47% the same two names. There's no diversification anymore, just memory.
Source: Bloomberg
$4 Billion Forced Buying In Semis
Levered SMH ETF AUM has climbed to ~$20B. Tuesday's rebalance forced ~$4B of mechanical SMH buying — and that's just one product, on one day, in one sector. Not opinions. Mechanics.
Source: Bloomberg
Vol Did The Opposite Thing
Up Days Are More Volatile Than Down
Since the Iran ceasefire, SPX 1-month realized vol on UP days is 16.9% — vs 14.6% on DOWN days. The chart is the highest spread in years. Investors hedged for a crash and got front-run by a rally.
Source: Cboe
NDX At Highs. Half The Members Aren't.
Nasdaq 4-week-highs breadth has collapsed from ~40% in April to just 14% now. The index keeps making new highs while the members underneath keep narrowing. Same chart, two completely different markets.
Source: Bloomberg
Cohen's Math
AMZN Crushed UPS. Customers Bought.
AMZN's logistics expansion put UPS, FDX, GXO, ODFL and FWRD on a clean YTD-normalized step-down. While the tape sold the news, paper bought 5,000 UPS Jun 105/110 call spreads for $0.65 calling the move overdone.
Source: Bloomberg
DK's Trade Cookbook
Houses Like 2006, Half The Buyers
New single-family inventory is back at the 2006 peak (~500K) but sales are running at HALF that pace (~55K). DK's note: nibbling on ITB puts. The math is the trade.
Source: Bloomberg
The Stealth Tax Cut
$115 Billion Stealth Tax Cut
After the SCOTUS IEEPA ruling, the effective US tariff rate dropped to 7.1% from an 11% peak. That's $115B annualized off the ledger — "acting like a business tax cut," per the macro team. Quietly, while everyone watched the headlines.
Source: Bloomberg
Mexico Tech: 5x China's
Mexican advanced-tech exports to the US have quadrupled and now run at 5x China's volume. The reshoring trade everyone has been talking about for two years already happened — in one country, while nobody was looking.
Source: Bloomberg
Smart Money Sold. Probably Wrong.
Worst Tech Selling In A Decade
Hedge funds dumped US Info Tech at -2.7 z-score on a 2-week basis — the largest unwind in 10 years, ex the 2021 meme frenzy. Two straight weeks of the same trade. Markets responded by ripping to new highs.
Source: Goldman Sachs
Retail's QQQ Buying: Third Ever
While hedge funds dumped tech, retail piled into QQQ at the 3rd-largest pace ever recorded. Not 3rd this year — 3rd ever. The smart-money trade is to fade the smart money.
Source: Goldman Sachs
Just Because...
The Eiffel Tower Grows Six Inches Every Summer
The Eiffel Tower is made of iron, which expands in heat. In summer it can grow up to 15cm (6 inches) taller than in winter, and the tip leans away from the sun by up to 7 inches as the sun-facing side expands. Gustave Eiffel accounted for this in the design. Paris's most famous landmark is technically a thermal physics demo.
