Goldman Derivatives Desk: "We Are At Panic Levels, And This Is Our Favorite Trade"

Excluding Thursday & Friday (April 3 & 4), today was the worst day for SPX since Sep 2022 and yet it felt very tame by day's end. Here's what happened: stocks opened at the highs, and drifted lower all session, with the S&P closing down 346bps to 5,268 with a of MOC $3bn to BUY. NDX -419bps @ 18,343, R2K -437bps @ 1,840 and Dow -250bps @ 39,593.

As Goldman trader Mike Washington writes in his daily post-mortem note, "fatigue has come up on almost every call today. Single stock desk flows slowed meaningfully as top-down market flows continue to dominate volumes and drive price action (ETF % tape still elevated at 41%). We had solid demand in Mag 7 early from long only community but it slowed as the trading session carried on. We did not see HF demand progresses from covering in macro product to long buys in single stocks."

Here, a quick detour on yesterday’s action, where - as we noted previously, - the short cover bid was "intense" and Goldman Prime Brokerage data showed yesterday as the largest notional net buying in U.S. Equities in 10+ years,, driven almost entirely by short covers. Yesterday's notional US short covering was the largest since Aug '15 and the 4th largest in the past 15 years. US-listed ETF shorts were net covered -4.7% (now +0.5% week/week) - the largest % covering since Sep '24 and the 5th largest covering day in the past five years.