Does anyone else feel like this market resembles the following... Ain't no stopping us now... The Dow is up 7 days in a row now - its longest winning streak since mid-Dec 2014 Nasdaq up 8 of the last 9 days - breaking above its 50DMA VIX down 10 days in a row (longest streak since Oct 2010) Futures give us a sense of today's Columbus Day trading (which was extremely quiet).. Once Europe closed US equities traded in an extremely narrow range... VIX was crushed again for the 10th day in a row (longest streak since oct 2010) and back below the key 200-day moving average... With VIX pushing a 15 handle, it may be worth remembering Goldman's baseline VIX levels of 18 would be justified given the current U.S. economic landscape. Notably VIX entirely decoupled from stocks today... VXX (The VIX ETF) is back at 9/17 lows, filling the gap again to Black Monday... Trannies and crude decoupled...breaking that narrative... Eli Lilly dropped 8% today - its biggest drop since Dec 2008...finding significant support at around $79 While the bond (and credit) markets are closed today, we thought a glance at Dell CDS (which soared on Friday) would be worthwhile (considering it is about to add $50bn more debt to its balance sheet!!!)... For some context on relative bond market moves, Treasury futures infer the following (30Y -4bps, 10Y -3bps, 5Y -2bps)...One wonders iof last week's bond dumpage was rate-locks ahead of EMC/Dell's huge issuance And while we are looking at the bond market, the up/downgrade ratio has not been this low (more downgrades than upgrades) since the peak of the crisis in 2009... (year-to-date S&P has upgraded 188 entities and downgraded 348) As Dow Jones reports, Rising downgrades and an increase in U.S. corporate defaults indicate " some cracks on the surface" of the domestic-growth outlook, said Jody Lurie, corporate credit analyst at financial-services firm Janney Montgomery Scott LLC. Many investors closely monitor debt-market trends as an indicator of U.S. economic health. In August and September, Moody's Investors Service issued 108 credit-rating downgrades for U.S. nonfinancial companies, compared with just 40 upgrades. That's the most downgrades in a two-month period since May and June 2009, the tail end of the last U.S. recession. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services downgraded U.S. companies 297 times in the first nine months of the year, the most downgrades since 2009, compared with just 172 upgrades. Meanwhile, the trailing 12-month default rate on lower-rated U.S. corporate bonds was 2.5% in September, up from 1.4% in July of last year, according to S&P. About a third of the downgrades targeted oil and gas companies or firms in other commodity-linked industries, following a plunge in oil prices in the second half of 2014, said Diane Vazza, head of global fixed-income research at S&P FX markets were dull with the USD ending flat against the majors (and an oddly linear drift lower in USDJPY)... Commodities were generally quiet with gold rising and crude tumbling... WTI Crude fell over 4.5% - its worst day since September 1st (after the epic Andy Hall ramp into August month-end)... Notably both USO (oil ETF) and OVX (oil Volatility) appears to have reached critical levels...after decoupling at month-end on what looks like massive hedging... Charts: Bloomberg Bonus Chart: *FORTRESS SAID TO PLAN CLOSING DOWN MACRO HEDGE FUND?