We leave it to Jack to explain what happened this week...







Quite a week!!

WTI's 2nd worst week in over 3 years (down 10 of last 11 weeks)

Dow's worst worst week in 3 years

Financials worst week in 2 months

Materials worst week since Sept 2011

VIX's Biggest week since Sept 2011

Gold's best week in 6 months

Silver's last 2 weeks are best in 6 months

HY Credit's worst 2 weeks since May 2012

IG Credit's worst week in 2 months

10Y Yield's best week since June 2012

US Oil Rig Count worst week in 2 years

The USDollar's worst week since July 2013

USDJPY's worst week since June 2013

Portugal Bonds worst week since July 2011

Greek stocks worst week since 1987

Some serious intraday volatility this week as hope kept shining through but in the end, reality won. Despite spiking euphoria among US Consumers, concerns over Greek elections, Japanese elections, the GDP-plunge-driven collapse in oil prices (with neither OPEC nor non-OPEC willing to blink yet on cutting production), and contagion to high-yield finallly caught up with stocks after they blindly followed the mainstream media narrative that low oil prices are unequivocally good for every muppet.

First things first... 2014 so far... "why would you buy a Treasury bond when you can buy stocks with dividends?"

Here's why crude matters...

ES trading vs. Crude for the week pic.twitter.com/Dv5yweu5aZ — Not Jim Cramer (@Not_Jim_Cramer) December 12, 2014

No Hindenburg Omen today but it appears the Dow & S&P are pressing down to test their 50DMAs...

On the week, The Dow was the laggard... NOT OFF THE LOWS

And Energy sector the worst...

The Russell 2000 closed the week negative year-to-date...

VIX surged this week (ignore the excitement over percentage moves)...

Treasury yields collapsed...

Leaving the decoupling at epic levels... between bonds and stocks..

and between credit and stocks...

The Dollar slipped a little today to end the week down over 1%

Gold and Silver had great weeks - very stable as the rest of the markets turmoiled - while oil prices

Crude is now down 25% from the initial OPEC leaks...back below $58!!

Makes you wonder eh? The decoupling began when QE3 was hinted at...

and energy credit is near 1000bps now... and is starting to spread to rest of the HY markets...

notably worse than stocks (for now)...

* * *

But it's all about the fundamentals!! Great Jobs Data, Great Retail Sales Data, and Great Consumer Confidence Data - unless that's all totally manipulated bullshit?

Charts: Bloomberg