The pain trade turns agony

Friday 16 May 2025

More pain from The Market Ear.

After the China/US trade talks

JPM’s great derivatives team dives in: “The China-US trade talks in Geneva have been more positive than anticipated and have resulted in a normalization of the volatility spread between the S&P 500 and European indices. We recommend buying SPX short-dated calls, fully funded by selling DAX or SX5E calls, to play a continuation in the short term momentum for US equities, which still have a large performance gap relative to European equities.”

Source: JPM

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.