Financials Trading Color for the day- Much better for sale across regional's (short), credit cards and Property & Casualty Insurance

• FINANCIALS: As we break through key technical levels to the upside, financials outperform on a quiet news day for the sector. Following Friday's quad-witching, volumes trade in-line with their 20-day MA. HFs continue to be our most active players, however vanillas have been more active today than over the past week. We started off the day much better for sale across regionals (short), credit cards and P&C insurance. However, after breaking through a couple key levels technically, we saw vanilla money come up and chase performance (namely in life insurers). We also saw HFs come in to buy higher beta groups (including banks and life names). Sentiment remains very strong, and those that are fighting the current momentum appear to have very weak hands at these levels.
• We're not seeing many new shorts being laid out despite being at new highs. The market eagerly awaits data coming over the next 30 hours as Obama speaks at noon today, Housing Starts data is released tomorrow morning, and the Fed releases it's rate decision at 2:15 tomorrow afternoon. Little to no company or industry-specific data is expected in the near-term