Risk Appetite Returns, For Now…

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, April 8.

State of Play

Stocks finished roughly unchanged yesterday after one of the most volatile sessions in recent memory. As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0645, it looks like risk appetite is returning from the dead:

• Stock index futures are pointing to gains. Small caps are leading the way, usually a good sign, with the Russell 2000 up 2%. S&P 500 futures are 1.5% to the good with the Nasdaq up 1.3%;

• Commodities are rebounding as well. Copper is up 1.8%. WTI crude oil up 0.7% to trade around $61/barrel. Gold ands silver are up 1.5% each;

• Cryptos are up a bit, continuing the risk-on theme. Bitcoin is up 2.5% to trade around $79,000;

• Bonds are unchanged after selling off yesterday. The 10-year yields 4.16%.

Today’s Known Events

There’s simply nothing in the way of known events that can have any real impact on risk appetite.

The National Federation of Independent Business earlier released its Small Business Optimism survey for March earlier printed at 97.4, below the 98.9 where economists had pegged it. Exciting stuff. We’ve arrived at a stage of the game where the market is not paying attention to surveys at all.

We do have some earnings, but there too it’s hard to see how this will move the needle: Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA 0.00%↑) and Tilray (TLRY 0.00%↑) are among the most prominent companies reporting today, both before the open at 0930, but neither will have any broad impact on markets.

For that we have to turn to the White House.

Art by author via Grok AI

The Bottom Line