The Nasdaq was the last great hope holding on to positive returns in 2015… until this morning…

Click on picture to enlarge

And as it hit unch year-to-date, TRIN surged (implying notably bearish contrarian sentiment)…

An Arms Index value above one is bearish, a value below one is bullish and a value of one indicates a balanced market. Traders look not only at the value of the index, but also at how it changes throughout the day. Traders look for extremes in the index value for signs that the market may soon change directions. The Arm’s Index was invented by Richard W. Arms, Jr. in 1967. In essence, a sudden surge in the TRIN indicates a jump in trader lack of confidence, as everyone scrambles to either go long the 2-3 rising stocks, or to sell or short the biggest decliners, ignoring the bulk of the market..

Today’s move was larger than Black Monday’s panic and almost as high as the panic on 9/1

As we noted previously, the Arms index is an indicator of market breadth essentially tracks lemming like momentum-chasing behavior with respect to volume… meaning today saw panic-buying volumes which given that it was dip-buyers at the close, we suspect won’t end well…

Charts: Bloomberg

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