Euribor Spreads moving finally!

After have a range of 1/2 a tick for the best part of 2 or 3 weeks, last week we finally broke out and moved to the upside, and as you would expect it didn't move just half a tick, it moved liek 3 or 4 prices, making me very annoyed at myself as I took 1/2 tick everywhere. I guess its just in my nature to do that but either way, the patient long holders reaped there rewards.
We have moved quite substantially in the back end of the curve, with Jun15Sep15 moving from 5.5s up to 7.5s, Mar15Jun15 trading from 4.5s to 6.5s and the story is similar along the cuve. If we look at the Jun14 Sep15, which represent the mid part of the curve, we moved from 19s on friday to 29.5 friday evening, which is hug!
I howver was shorting the 3 month spreads the whole move up and the negative rate comment from ECB's Visco saying "if the economy needs further help the ECB will cut the deposit rate to negative territory," gave me my out. Now just sitting back waiting for another push higher hopefully to short again.
The volume has definatly been more biased to the upside as we can see below with big clips going through in both Euribor and Short Sterling.

Stocks and Bonds on highs! Makes sense..

Im watching stocks doing there normal thing, push to new high day after day, and the Bund wants to join in also, as this is trading at highs of the day. As stocks push up so does the Bund, so much for the saying buy stocks sell bonds!

Non Farm Beats Expectations

Been quite an eventful day so far, with a beat in non farm topping off the movement. We started the day off quiet, but the ECBs Nowotny came out saying that the market over reacted to the Negative rate comments from Draghi, this sparked some life into the Euribor contracts, and gave some good opportunities to get long some spreads.
This comment was later retracted with Nowotny saying that the market over reacted to HIS comment, this pushed Euribors up again, time to get long more spreads. I went long 3s, in Jun14 Sep14 and 4s in Mar15jun15.
We now just had non farm, which pushed these spreads up, and gave the half tick profit!..100 tick Spike in the USD/YEN, 100 point move in the DOW, as well as big moves in the other indices. Bund is down 40 ticks.
This was mainly triggered by a 50k revision to the previous number coupled with the 25k beat for this months number.

Here are the moves in the Dow and the Yen. As you can see the yen spiked down 30 pips jus before the number. Big punt, or leaked info?

ECB Cuts Rates, Ponders Negative Rates!

It was a pretty split consensus as to what teh ECB was going to do today and they decided to cut 0.25%. This isnt going to have much of an impact but its more symbolic in my opinion.
Draghi remained very accomadative which led to wild fluctuations in the EURO and the BUND.
Initially we came off in the Euro and then pushed higher by over 100 pips as we rose above 1.32.
However we then came off heavily going below 1.30 as Draghi said the ECB are open to the idea of negative rates.
This pushed the Bunds also above 147! And killed any hopes of Euribor Spreads pushing further upwards.
Trading the Euribor spreads has been difficult of late, purely due to lack of participation so today's move were some what of a relief. We did pop up in spreads initially but we are now on new lows as the Bunds consolidate above 147 and the curve is likely to flatten further.
It will be tough to know how to play this as in general even if you manage to get a good price the general lack of action makes it hard to get out, but my philosophy is to always buy these new lows, so I will remain a buyer as it keeps drifting lower, waiting for the pop up if one does arrive.
Tomorrow we have Non farm payrolls, which are likely to be poor which will put further pressure on these Spreads, but hopefully some volatility will arise from the number allowing for some quick scalping in and out.

Market falls Sharply on Twitter Hack!

It was just past 6pm UK time, when there was a flash on the newswires that the white house got bombed twice and Obama was injured!
This is what happened to the ES mini futures.

In those 5 minutes over 260K contracts were traded!! The ES dropped 16 fat ticks on the move, the Dow dropped 120, and it was caused by someone hacking the Associated Press twitter feed.
The notional value of this was around 20 billion!
Now those guys cleaned up hard on it, the fact the market can be so easily manipulated like this is a cause for concern, and just shows how messed up this market really is.

UPDATE: 

The so-called "Syrian Electronic Army," a group of pro-regime hackers, is claiming credit for hacking AP's official Twitter feeds.

This appears to be the organization's third successful hack of an American media outlet in just over one week. Over the weekend, the group claimed credit for similar attacks on Twitter feeds run by CBS News, and last week, the group successfully attacked NPR's content management system and Twitter feed. 

Subdued Week For STIR Spreads

We have seen some pretty wild swings in the Equity space as well as commodities, as we have had huge spikes down in GOLD in particularly. Bunds have breached 146 again as risk appetite wains.
However STIR spreads have remained static. Low volume, low interest, and a slight downward trend.
We are trading at the lowest levels in these spreads, and my first thought is just to buy buy buy. However its a matter of patience as there is no real push one way or the other and so being able to day trade it is near on impossible.
I had got long 4s and 3.5 in Jun14Sep14, long 4.5s in Sep14Dec14, long MarJun14 at 5.5 and 5 and long 6s in Jun15Sep15, and managed to eek out 1/2 tick in some and scratch the rest, but this was done over a period of 4 days which is the furthest thing from day trading. There will be a day soon where some catalyst will push these spreads up, when it will be I dont know, but this situation has happened before. The potential jump up in the spreads will be the perfect opportunity to short.
As I right its still dead as anything, cant imagine much to change that but you never know.

Leaking Data Early - Not Really Surprised!

I've been beating on about leaked data for quite a while now and the recent allegations of a KPMG senior partner divulging insider info show a peek into whats happening. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22087201)
We know have a case with a Thomson Reuters employee. Read below: There is plenty of it out there, but at least the authorities are getting some penetration into this.


Reuters) - A former Thomson Reuters Corp employee has filed a lawsuit saying he was fired for telling the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he believed the company violated insider-trading laws in releasing a consumer sentiment survey early to some subscribers.
In the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, Mark Rosenblum said he was terminated after telling U.S. authorities that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers was released at different times to different subscribers.
"We believe the accusations from the complainant against Thomson Reuters to be unsubstantiated and without merit, and we will defend against them vigorously," a company spokesman said in a statement.
Rosenblum said in his court papers that Thomson Reuters releases the monthly survey to so-called "ultra low-latency" subscribers at two seconds before 9:55 a.m. ET, to "desktop" subscribers at 9:55 a.m., and to the general public at 10 a.m.
In the financial services industry, low latency is a reference to higher speed services often used by high-frequency traders.
Rosenblum said in the court papers that last June 29, he told an unnamed FBI agent that he believed this "tiered release" violated federal securities laws, and that on the same day he told company executives that he had contacted federal investigators about the matter.
In the lawsuit, Rosenblum said he was fired on August 3 from his job as a redistribution specialist, without severance, for engaging in protected whistleblowing activity under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. He is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Jesse Rose, a lawyer for Rosenblum, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FBI spokesman Jim Margolin declined to comment.
The case is Rosenblum v. Thomson Reuters (Markets) LLC, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-02219.

There is plenty of it out there, but at least the authorities are getting some penetration into this.