Morning Rage 4.5.2012

Gold has gained $10, or 0.66%, after more than 3% losses yesterday. Crude futures are unchanged.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is near 17 today, with the ETF that tracks the VIX, VXX, higher by 1.9%.

We are expecting trading to be slow today ahead of the holiday tomorrow. As a reminder, the Department of Labor will still release the monthly employment report tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. ET. The ADP report issued this week showed 209,000 private sector jobs were created in March, compared with an expectation of 203,000 for tomorrow’s report.

If trading is slow, we recommed taking a look at “The Dimon Manifesto,” from Bloomberg. Among the gems in Dimon’s annual letter: “I have no doubt that our own actions made the recovery worse than it otherwise would have been.”

Bloomberg also reports some interesting figures: JPM makes about 1.5 cents p/share trading equities; $70 p/trade in foreign exchange; and $1,500 p/trade in credit markets. Just 10% of trades generate more than $50,000.