Been there

Both Citadel and JPM noting a change in the behavior of Retail over the past month... "Today’s relief rally brings confirmation that the shift in retail behavior that we have observed over the past month is persisting: retail moved from ‘buying the dip’ (e.g. this time last year), to now skipping the dips, selling into rallies, and positioning more defensively, report. Overall, retail activity remained extremely subdued this week, driven by net selling in single stocks and weak ETF purchases. Even more so today, despite oil posting its largest decline since 2020 and VIX breaking below 20, intraday retail flows showed no signs of strengthening." (JPM) "The most notable change has been a decisive rotation into puts. Over the past two weeks, total retail put activity has surged to the 99th percentile relative to all other 10-day trading periods since the start of 2020. Call activity has simultaneously fallen into the 70th percentile (in just the 13th percentile versus the past 1 year). This divergence culminated in a rare inflection point on April 2nd, when more puts than calls were traded by retail at Citadel Securities – only the sixth such occurrence in the history of our platform." (Citadel)

Margaret Ryan, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement director, resigned effective last week after clashing with agency leadership over the direction of investigations, specifically those involving Donald Trump and his family, per YF

5 minutes before Trump’s announcement: * $1.5B notional worth of S&P500 (ES) futures are bought in a single clip. * $192M notional of oil futures (CL) sold. More than 4x-6x any other trade size during the market close. Insiders profited from his lies in broad daylight!