| Tech stock selloff, mixed inflation messages and jarring January 6 testimony. Yesterday's stock rout was again led by the tech sector, with the Nasdaq 100 Index closing more than 3% lower. The drop in stocks came after a measure of consumer confidence for the US came in significantly lower than forecast. Nasdaq futures show little sign of a bounce in today's trade, with focus remaining firmly on the outlook for growth and inflation as the first half of the year comes to a close. There is also little sign of bullishness in the crypto space, with Bitcoin back under $20,000 this morning. Analysts are becoming increasingly concerned that the largest digital token cannot break above that level, with some expecting a fresh "washout" decline before a bottom is found. A panel discussion at the European Central Bank's Sintra conference that includes the heads of the Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of England and Bank for International Settlements will be a key event today, with traders looking for clues on central bank policy and the inflation outlook. Euro-area inflation data gave mixed signals earlier, with German numbers coming in lower than expected while Spain's headline print unexpectedly rose to double figures. Morgan Stanley economists said they see the euro-area entering a recession in the final quarter of this year. On Fed policy, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said she wants to see the benchmark lending rate "a little bit above 4% next year."  | A former White House aide portrayed a violent and out-of-control Donald Trump in his presidency's final weeks. Cassidy Hutchinson, then an assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave the most gripping testimony yet in a House committee's hearings on the Capitol riot. In the hours after her testimony, however, doubt was cast on her second-hand account of Trump trying to grab the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle after his Secret Service refused his demand to be driven to the US Capitol. An explosive Trump was indifferent to unfolding violence and effusive in his use of expletives as rioters stormed the US Capitol, Hutchinson testified. European stocks traded poorly with most indexes extending opening losses. Germany's DAX is the weakest index, dropping more than 1.5% as of 5:30am New York time. S&P 500 futures also fell. German bonds erased an early rally as hot Spanish inflation offset a surprisingly weak release from one of the German regions. The Swiss franc outperformed G-10 peers. Crude futures drifted back to best levels for the week. Spot gold dropped near $1,810/oz. The final day of the ECB's Forum on Central Banking will take center stage with a panel discussion between BOE Governor Andrew Bailey, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens and ECB President Christine Lagarde starting at 9 a.m. Fed's Loretta Mester and James Bullard will speak later in the session. Economic data includes the weekly MBA mortgage applications at 7 a.m. before a third look at 1Q GDP, personal consumption and core PCE at 8:30 a.m. DOE oil inventory numbers are due at 10:30 a.m. Paychex Inc. and General Mills Inc. are among companies scheduled to report earnings. Here's what caught our eye over the past 24 hours. Yesterday Tracy Alloway and I posted a list of some things that have gone down in price lately. Some are really important commodities (like industrial metals and lumber) and some are more trivial (like jpegs of Bored Apes). Two items on the list though came from StockX, where prices are going down on things like Yeezy sneakers and Nvidia graphics cards. Interestingly enough, a couple of hours after we posted the list, it was reported that StockX is doing a round of layoffs. Back in April, I half-joked that crushing the crypto market would probably help ease inflation to some extent. Obviously crypto overall is still a tiny part of the overall economy, with all the coins worth somewhere around $1 trillion (and that's probably generous, given the liquidity on some of them). But the crypto rich skew young and likely have a high marginal propensity to consume (just look at the endless circuit of parties — sorry, I mean conferences — in luxurious locations around the world). With so much crypto wealth having been eviscerated, there are certain categories of goods that you'd expect to see soften: watches, sneakers, probably some luxury cars, weird street art, stuff like that.
It's probably not enough to actually move the dial on inflation, and after all what really matters are things that everyone consumes, like food and oil etc. But the negative wealth shock we've seen from the decline in various assets over the last several months is probably bleeding through to at least a handful of consumer goods. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter @TheStalwart | 
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