Stocks & Silver Soar For 5th Straight Month, Bonds & Dollar Dumped Tyler Durden Mon, 08/31/2020 - 16:01 August 2020's 7.3% surge in the major US market index is the largest August gain since 1984 (when the S&P 500 rose 10.63%), but as the chart below shows Trannies almost doubled those gains... Source: Bloomberg Crazy rotation day today (Nasdaq ripped and Dow and Small Caps slammed at the cash open as S&P clung to unch) but everything collapsed into a really ugly close... While this broke the S&P's streak of gains (would have been the longest streak since April 2019), it was still the 5th straight monthly gain... "Do you want to play this game?" And that strong month sent The Dow back into the green for 2020... but today's weakness took it back red... Source: Bloomberg All thanks to an epic squeeze in the most-shorted stocks (more than doubling the S&P's performance)... Source: Bloomberg The 5th month in a row closing at record highs... Source: Bloomberg With the strength being concentrated in fewer and fewer stocks... Source: Bloomberg As AAPL nears the same size as the entire Russell 2000!!!! Source: Bloomberg TSLA up 75% in August... bwuahahaha!!! Source: Bloomberg VIX was up on the month (despite soaring stocks) VIX was higher on the day again (biggest jump since July 13th), continuing to decouple with stocks... Source: Bloomberg As the correlation between stocks and VIX reaches its highest since volmageddon in 2018 Source: Bloomberg It was an ugly month for bonds with the long-end up over 25bps (small rotation in the last day helped a lot as rotation began... Source: Bloomberg In fact August was the worst relative performance of bonds to stocks since Oct 2011... Source: Bloomberg 10Y Yields spiked 17bps on the month - the biggest absolute monthly spike since Sept 2018 - and oscillated around 70bps thanks to some rotation today (30Y back above 1.50%)... Source: Bloomberg But still some context for this rate move is needed... Source: Bloomberg Breakevens ripped higher for the 5th straight month (and up 7 days in a row) to their highest since May 2019... Source: Bloomberg Real yields ended notably lower (down from -1.00% to -1.10% on the month) signaling more upside for gold... Source: Bloomberg The dollar was pummeled for the 5th straight month to its lowest since May 2018... Source: Bloomberg Cryptos were mixed with Ethereum strong (DeFi boom), Bitcoin Cash weak, and Bitcoin small gains... Source: Bloomberg Copper and Crude had a strong month, gold ended flat, silver the big winner... Source: Bloomberg Gold rallied back to last week's Powell-spooked highs today... But Gold ended the month unchanged... Source: Bloomberg But despite a big roundtrip early on, Silver rallied notably on the month... Source: Bloomberg Which meant the Gold/Silver ratio cratered (for the 4th month in the last 5)...ending the month below 70x at the lowest level (silver strongest relative to gold) since March 2017... Source: Bloomberg And finally there's this! Source: Bloomberg And this... Source: Bloomberg And this... *BULLARD: WANT TO GUARD AGAINST ASSET BUBBLES GOING FORWARD Because it's different this time... Source: Bloomberg Probably nothing!