AJB Capital

Big morning. A lot just happened at once, so let me catch everyone up.

GDP and PCE dropped simultaneously. These reports were delayed from the government shutdown, so we got them all at once today. GDP came in at 1.4% annualized for Q4. That's a big miss... consensus was around 2.5-3%. The shutdown clearly dragged on the number. Personal consumption slowed to 2.4% from 3.5% the quarter before.

The headline looks ugly, but the underlying demand picture is still intact. Final sales to private domestic purchasers rose 2.4%. The economy didn't fall off a cliff. The shutdown just made it look that way.

The problem is inflation. Core PCE, the Fed's preferred gauge, came in at 0.4% month over month. Biggest monthly jump in nearly a year. Year over year it's now at 3%. Goods up 0.4%, services up 0.3%. Broad-based. Not what the Fed wanted to see.

So you've got weaker growth and hotter inflation in the same print. That's the stagflation mix nobody wants. Art Hogan at B. Riley called it a "messy mess

Volatility is creeping back. If you're day trading it, check this out.

VIX has been trending higher for a couple months now. We've been tracking this thing and we're getting back up towards the edges of the range. When we get to these levels people start thinking about positioning for volatility to pull back in. If you're looking out a couple days or a couple weeks, that's the trade you're watching for.

If you're an intraday trader though and you just want to trade volatility while it's here, there are two tickers you should pay attention to.

UVXY is a 1.5x leveraged long VIX ETF. It tracks short-term VIX futures and moves in the same direction as fear. When the market sells off and volatility spikes, this thing rips because of the leverage.

SVXY is the other side. It's a -0.5x inverse VIX ETF so it goes up when volatility goes down. Doesn't move as fast as UVXY because the leverage is lower but when vol starts to fade this is how you play that.

The way we like to trade these intraday is wi