Five anonymised historical charts were dealt to every player. The Monkey Index returned +0.02% across the same tape.
63 desks completed all five charts.
Fears of a global manufacturing slump had spent the winter battering industrial chips, with investors convinced a cyclical downturn was setting in. By early March the panic was spent, and the bounce held.
The taper tantrum had knocked the froth off cloud valuations, and half the market still thought subscription software was burning too much cash to ever turn a profit. In the August lull, neither side was willing to blink.
Years of near-zero interest rates had kept brokerage margins under a lid, leaving the sector idling until the Fed showed its hand. This was the week buyers took the front foot.
Old-line telecoms were caught between dying copper landlines and the colossal cost of building out mobile networks, with the market treating them as sluggish utilities with nowhere to go. A gentle three-month drift ran out of steam, and sellers took the week.
The frantic trading from the spring bond scare had completely dried up, leaving the big exchange operators stuck in a lifeless summer range. With a government shutdown brewing in Washington, the stalemate finally broke to the downside.