Early in the week crypto weakness bled into other momentum/speculative thematic retail favorites within the equity market but it was contained with most major US indices rallying on Monday despite Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow. All was quiet on Tuesday morning until SAAS-Pocalypse. It took a while for reviews of Anthropic's latest upgrade to make the rounds on Wall Street but when it did it sent shockwaves through financial markets. There were sharp declines in software, data analytics and staffing firms. This also raised some concern within private credit markets about exposure to the sector and hit many asset managers and private equity companies as well. After bouncing ~3% today, the iShares tech-software ETF is down ~9% for the week and >20% YTD. This week we also had the next round of hyperscalers earnings with massive increases in capex. The mood shifted Friday as buyers came in for oversold levels across equities and crypto, and for the week value outperformed growth across all capitalizations which has steadily been the case since Halloween.

Brent crude ended the week down ~2%. - Precious metals were mixed as gold rose 5% but silver, platinum and palladium fell modestly for the week. Gold has held above its 50d ma. Silver spent Friday reclaiming its 50d after a near-test of the 100d ma earlier in the day. After nose-diving to $60k, Bitcoin rocketed higher on Friday following Strategy’s Thursday evening earnings call,coinciding with deeply oversold levels, and regained $70k.

Treasury yields were lower for the week by 2-4bp across the curve. The strong ISM Manufacturing print on Monday pushed yields higher, but that was more than countered by the weak job data on Thursday. At their lows this week the 10y was ~4.18%, a resistance level recently cleared.

Below-zero conditions will hit the NYC-area this weekend. Perfect excuse to hunker down and watch the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony. Should provide a good lead-up to the Puppy Bowl, and also the Super Bowl, on Sunday. Can Sam Darnold write the last chapter of his comeback story, or will the ghosts of the Pats D reappear as he drops back to throw? In US data, the delayed non-farm payrolls and CPI data will be released next week, along with Retail sales. Japan will be voting in a snap election for the lower house. Earnings will continue, with Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Cisco among the many reporters. Have a great weekend and enjoy the Big Game.