180 Stocks Hit New Lows. The Index Did a 180 and Called It 0.19%.

Accenture Was Up 24.1% by Lunch and Settled for 15.8% The largest move on our board closed at 7.62% of its own day range.

Every Number at the Top Said Fine. The Count Underneath Said 180. A 0.1 point slip repriced the one end of the curve nobody needed repriced.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1949%. Advancers beat decliners 1,505 to 1,190. Up volume beat down volume. Five of eleven sector proxies rose. Read the summary line only and you went to bed pleased.

Beneath it, 180 NYSE issues made fresh 52-week lows, the highest of the 70 sessions since 24 June and past the 142 printed in the late-September unpleasantness, when everybody at least had the decency to look worried. Eleven issues made new highs. Eleven.

The curve is the shape of the same afternoon, not the cause of it. The 2-year closed 10 basis points lower at 4.78%. The ISM release sent both tenors to session highs inside its own bar; what walked them back has no name on it. The 30-year, asked to join in, offered 3. The gap between 2s and 10s went to 46 basis points, the widest since 27 August. Relief was delivered in full to the end of the curve where no long-duration equity was waiting.

What held the index up was two things wearing a crowd’s clothing. Energy, as a refined-product supply thread ran. Technology, on Accenture. Remove those and the median stock spent Thursday being sold by people who read further down the page.

Payrolls print at 08:30 ET. The front end has already bought the deceleration.

The One That Mattered

Thursday’s number was 180, and it is the only one that disagreed with every other number on the page. The index went up. Advancers won. Up volume won. And 180 individual companies, more than on any session since 24 June, quietly marked themselves down to a year’s worth of lows whilst the headline took a bow. The front end got its 10 basis points and the long end conceded 3, which tells you who the relief was for and who was merely in the room. When the relief arrives at the front of the curve and not the back, who is it actually for? We went down the rabbit hole in today’s Macro Edge. [link]

Stock Market Edge

The Relief Was Addressed to Somebody Else 10 at the front, 3 at the back, 180 on the wrong list.

Premarket snapshot:

December ES traded 7,746.50 on the 06:30 to 06:34:59 UTC five-minute bar, captured at 07:30 UK and read twice. Up 0.2913% on 7,724.00. NQ 0.3511%, YM 0.3864%, RTY 0.4351%. Volatility finished at 16.39, having visited 17.59.

Sector rotation:

Five of eleven proxies rose. Energy led at 1.9512% and closed at 97.36% of its range, which is what conviction looks like. Technology added 1.0524% on one name. Healthcare was worst at 1.3181%, communications next at 0.9282%, both closing in the bottom fifth.

Earnings or guidance:

Accenture closed 212.30, up 15.7768%, having been up 24.137% at lunchtime. It gave back a third of its best day, finishing at 7.62% of its range. McCormick posted GAAP earnings of 0.36 against 0.84 and fell 4.8707%, which the wires called a beat.

Cross-asset nuance:

November WTI settled 92.87, December Brent 102.31. December copper fell 1.261% whilst November WTI, December silver and gold spot rose, and copper is the one you have to actually use. The dollar added 0.573%, three quarters of it the euro, as the front end rallied 10 basis points.

Crypto Market Edge

84,824 Says Demand. 195.6 Million Says One Phone Call. The flow number was positive. Five of its twelve components were not.

Price snapshot:

Bitcoin closed the UTC day at 84,824.23, up 1.4792%. The Coinbase leg printed 84,848.73, agreeing to 0.0289%. Ether closed 2,704.60, up 0.7352%. Both pairs swapped sides, which rules out one feed drifting and leaves a timing artefact in a conspiracy’s coat.

Flows and positioning:

Spot bitcoin ETFs netted 102.7 million dollars, of which IBIT supplied 195.6 million. That is 190.5% of the headline, which should stop anybody calling Thursday demand. Three funds bought 217.2 million between them and six took out 114.5 million. Both rows provisional, neither marked.

Leadership and rotation:

Bitcoin came back to the crypto-only board at rank 24 of 25 and stayed out of the all-asset top 25. Solana returned at 12. Ether, XRP and Dogecoin left. Dogecoin’s weekly volume held at exactly 59 and high whilst it went, which is a reminder that a board is a queue, not a thermometer.

Catalysts and roadmap:

Strategy filed an 8-K on 1 October for the period ended 30 September, and this book opened it. It discloses a 12.00% preferred dividend and says nothing about bitcoin. Holdings stay at 847,666 coins. Payrolls at 08:30 ET is the only card.

TL;DR

• The index rose 0.1949% whilst 180 NYSE issues made fresh 52-week lows, the most of any session since 24 June. Both facts are true.
• The ISM headline slipped 0.1 to 54.5. The 2-year closed 10 basis points lower and the 30-year, holding most of the duration risk, conceded three.
• Accenture was up 24.137% at lunchtime and closed up 15.7768%, finishing at 7.62% of its own range on 2.75 times the prior session’s volume.
• Bitcoin funds netted 102.7 million dollars, of which one fund was 195.6 million. Of the other eleven, six left, three bought and three abstained.
• Payrolls print at 08:30 ET against a prior 162,000. The front end has bought the deceleration and the other 180 names have not.

Fun Fact

The Treasury Curve Has a Tenor Nobody Has Ever Plotted Fourteen maturities, and one of them is a month and a half.

The daily Treasury yield curve publishes fourteen points, and wedged between the 1-month and the 2-month sits a 1.5-month. Nearly every chart drawn from it goes straight from one to two, which means a genuine US government yield spends its entire existence unobserved, unloved, and almost certainly fine about it.