With a deluge of geopolitical news and D.C. commentary since he weekend, the S&P 500, equal-weight and Russell 2000 saw declines of around 0.5% or more at the lows as Monday began, but have recovered to around unchanged to slightly up on the day.

Looking more domestically, the weekend was reasonably calm ahead of the start of earnings season until Sunday evening, when it was disclosed that the DOJ had opened an investigation into Fed Chair Powell over congressional testimony he gave about the central bank’s building renovation project. This is a topic we thought we had moved on from, with Chair Powell’s term about to end and Trump close to naming a successor. Powell responded with a response that the investigation was the pretext to the constant pressure from the White House to lower rates and vowed to defend the independence of the central bank. That has hit the Dollar today.

President Trump called for a cap on credit card interest, which is weighing on the financial sector generally and credit card/payment processors, banks and Buy Now Pay Later stocks specifically (the later opened higher but then came under pressure…later). Healthcare is also under pressure Managed care stocks are lower after President Trump said he might veto legislation to extend ACA subsidies and biopharma is seeing broad pressure. There’s been a deluge of healthcare and consumer corporate updates as the JP Morgan Healthcare and ICR conferences kicked off. It’s not helping Healthcare today but Consumer Staples is the leading sector today with broad strength outside of a few food names. Tech, materials (miners) and industrials (aerospace/defense, construction) are also trading well.

The curve has moved around today with the end-result being yields up about 1bp. The US Dollar Index fell sharply overnight following news of the Powell investigation but is off its lows. Crude is up modestly despite all the global tension but had already gone from $60 to $63 the prior two days. Nat gas is bouncing. Precious metals are seeing a strong bid and copper is higher as well.