It was a crazy morning in the US as stocks looked set to follow China lower. Commodities were soft in the early going while the dollar recovered versus the EUR/GBP/AUD/CAD and lost ground versus the JPY.

Most of that was reversed shortly after the opening of cash trading on Wall St. Stocks began to recover, as did oil. Oil was helped by the API demand figures as well as the inventory data from the EIA. Stocks and oil rose together and the short squeeze was on for those short EUR/USD, GBP/USD (which was hammered by the BOE minutes) and AUD/USD. Even before the turn in the equity and commodities markets, central bank buying of the currencies versus the dollar helped steady their early fall.

A number of rumors made the rounds as EUR/USD spiked higher during the US morning. Talk of Saudi buying made the rounds while a juicier rumor that a trading error on the IMM drove prices through the roof. A look at the accompanying chart suggest there just may be something to that. No matter, the damage was done and EUR/USD reached 1.4267 before easing to 1.4230 at the close.

8-19-imm

USD/JPY triggered very large stops in the 93.90 area first thing this morning, falling as low as 93.75. Rebounds were very limited, surprising in light of the apparent rebound in risk appetite as seen in oil and equity indexes.

AUD/USD was buoyed by the Chinese buying below the 0.8200 level and the rapid scramble to cover risk-aversion trades (like short AUD/USD and short AUD/JPY) , rallying as high as 0.8313 before stalling.

Best bet is to clear your head, forget today’s wonly price action, and the wonky price action of the prior two sessions as well, and come at the markets from a clean sheet tomorrow.