GROWL: The "secret" word today is… VOLITILITY

The Fed.GOV PPT, Inc. made a valiant effort to take a 2% sell-off and paint the final tape green yesterday, to no avail. Meanwhile PMs, which don’t have the Fed’s favoured status and are not therefore subject to the whims of Benron Bernanke and his Plunge Protection Team (Goldman, etc.), sold-off early and stayed sold off. We’re now rather well below the psychologically important 1200 mark for Gold. We might stay there a while, we might not.

Who knows, really?

Funemployment numbers are due, “expectations” are for a modest drop in both continuing and initial claims. Expect the “unprecedented”.

Equities in the Euro zone are rallying a bit, I guess the sight of Greeks going on a “general strike” is telling them all is right and well with the world again. That, or the swap lines to the Fed, and therefore our wallets, are wide open once again to central banks in Europe – as the Fed obviously not satisfied with fleecing us for its own purposes, they have to fleece us so central banks in France and Germany don’t have to take a haircut on their bad bets.

There’s no reason to believe we won’t see a whole lot more days like yesterday – as fundamentals try in vain to assert themselves as relevant (causing massive high-volume sell-offs) only to be thwarted in their noble cause by the daily PPT zero-volume melt-up.

UPDATE: Both Funemployment numbers were a miss, downside.  Initial claims were up nontrivially (471K vs. 446K, 439K exp.) and continuing claims benefited a bit from more people rolling off the back end, but were still higher.  Could be a messy day, folks.  Hang on.