Hartnett: The World's Most Crowded Trades Are Getting Liquidated

While the move in the S&P over the past few days may not have been exactly brutal, for many traders last week has a distinct March 2020 feel to it, for one simple reason: every trade that had worked in the past year, suddenly hit a brick wall and cratered: everything from the Mag 7 (the most popular stock strategy), to the yen short (the most popular FX carry trade), to gold (the most popular anti-fiscal stupidity trade), to bitcoin, suddenly crashed and burned. Indeed, as BofA's Michael Hartnett writes in his latest Flow Show note(available to pro subs in the usual place), the past 2 weeks have seen gold (an asset inflation play) tumble -8% in Japanese yen (an asset deflation play) as rates (Powell cuts) and politics (Trump wins) drove the liquidation of world's most crowded trades (such as short yen, long copper, long AI).

And while many bulls have argued the correction was healthy, Hartnett warns that key levels that must hold are the following: yen (JPY) 152, copper (HG1) 9000, tech (NDX) 18700. Those same bulls will also say that as long as these levels hold, this will be just another dip-buying opportunity as some of the froth clears out; that's because - as Hartnett wrote last week - investors had fully priced-in the bullish combo of Fed cut (100%), Trump victory (75%), and soft landing (68%)...