https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/gold-suffers-worst-week-3-years-fed-balance-sheet-explodes

Gold Suffers Worst Week In 3 Years As Fed Balance Sheet Explodes

Remember, this is 'Not' QE...

The Fed has expanded its balance sheet for 10 straight weeks (by almost $280 billion) - the biggest such expansion since April 2013, the peak of QE3...

Source: Bloomberg

Since The started 'NotQE' POMO...

Stocks haven't had a down week...

Source: Bloomberg

And that explosion in liquidity means fun-durr-mentals collapsing just don't matter...

Source: Bloomberg

Or maybe there's another reason (stocks have soared non-stop as Warren's odds of getting the nomination have tumbled)...

Source: Bloomberg

All of which made us think...

* * *

Chinese stocks ended the week green but the late Friday session saw notable selling pressure...

Source: Bloomberg

European markets were also higher with a notable divergence between Spain/UK and France/Germany/Italy...

Source: Bloomberg

Most notably, European stocks are broadly back near their record highs...

Source: Bloomberg

US equity markets were higher on the week, led by a major move in Trannies all on the back of trade-deal optimism...

It seems, despite Trump's statement that he hasn't agreed to rollback tariffs, the market prefers to believe China/Kudlow over Trump/Navarro...

However, optimism for a US-China trade deal seem to have stalled the last few days...

Source: Bloomberg

Rather more notably, despite massive intraday squeezes, "most shorted" stocks fell for the second week in a row...

Source: Bloomberg

Momentum had another ugly week (down 5 weeks in a row and this was the worst week since the September momo massacre)...

Source: Bloomberg

VIX tumbled for the 6th week in a row (longest streak since Feb 2019) barely holding above an 11 handle...

And as VIX tumbled, specs piled in to a new record short position...

Source: Bloomberg

Bond yields have tracked Cyclicals/Defensive Stocks almost perfectly...

Source: Bloomberg

Bonds were a bloodbath this week with Treasury yields blowing out around 20bps (short-end outperformed)...

Source: Bloomberg

Pushing the longer-end of the curve to 3-month highs...

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve exploded this week: 3m10y curve steepened for 5 straight weeks but 2y10y biggest weekly steepening since Feb 2018...

Source: Bloomberg

Rates markets are now pricing in less than one rate-cut by the end of 2020...

Source: Bloomberg

German bond yields have also soared, back near their highest of the year...

Source: Bloomberg

As European issuance has broken the full-year issuance record with more than seven weeks to spare, after borrowers including Apple Inc., Bayer AG and the People’s Republic of China piled in to the market this week.

Source: Bloomberg

And Japanese bond yields saw the biggest weekly rise since 2013...

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar soared by the most since August 2018 this week...

Source: Bloomberg

Offshore Yuan rallied for the sixth straight week (longest run sine 2018), but trade-deal optimism gains rolled over in the last 24 hours...

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos had a tough week, tumbling in the last 48 hours...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin broke back below $9,000...

Source: Bloomberg

Commodities were extremely mixed this week with PMs pummeled and crude and copper bid...

Source: Bloomberg

WTI ended back above $57, but could not top $58 at the upper edge of its medium-term range...

Source: Bloomberg

This was Gold's worst week since Nov 2016 (Trump Election)...

...and Silver's worst week since Oct 2016...

Despite gold's tumble on the week, silver was considerably worse, driving the gold/silver ratio to its highest since mid August...

Source: Bloomberg

Gold also tumbled against yuan, back to its lowest since early August...

Source: Bloomberg

And as global negative-yielding debt drops below $12 trillion, one wonders if gold has further to fall...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, here a few scary things for melt-up fans to watch...

The surge in yields - we note that despite all the excitement about bond yields rising, signaling to some that growth is back and everything with record high stocks is awesome again, the last two times that rates accelerate at this pace, things did not end well for stocks...