There are no two ways about it: the first full year of the year was a lousy one for stocks, with the S&P falling by 1.9% and the Nasdaq tumbling 3.5%, its biggest drop since the year 2000 - the year the dot com bubble popped. The culprit for the plunge, of course, was the Fed, with the mid-week pivot coinciding with the release of the hawkish December FOMC minutes that hinted at not just a faster liftoff, but an even faster balance sheet drawdown. As a result, banks expect the Fed to hike either three or four times, with some expecting the Fed to announce QT in early H2, and Friday's dismal jobs report which showed just 199K gains (vs. consensus of 450K) did not deter hawkish expectations as the unemployment rate - just a few years ago viewed as a completely meaningless statistic - fell to 3.9%, down 0.3% from 4.2% in November. Looking at the price action, Goldman's David Kostin - who is of course, head of research and not an actual trader - points to the rapid move higher ...
"La verità passa per tre gradini: prima viene ridicolizzata, poi viene contrastata, infine viene accettata come ovvia" (A. Schopenhauer)