Welcome to our exchanges at Goldman Sachs Markets Update for Friday, August 21st.

Each week we check in with leaders across the firm to get their quick take on what they're watching and seeing in the market.

I'm Jake Seward, Global Head of Corporate Communications

here at the firm, and I'm joined today by Michael Cassell, who's back on from our Global

Markets Division. Welcome back to the program, Michael.

Thanks for having me.

So after the big crash in March, the S&P has rallied back

and hit a record high this week,

the fastest bear market recovered history. what does it feel like on the

trading floor or the virtual trading floor this week I'd say it was fairly subdued even

for a virtual trading floor it doesn't feel like a classic

bull market atmosphere at the moment.

And I guess there's still a lot of skeptics out there.

It's the middle of summer and in the middle of a pandemic.

I'll bear in mind that we got to these fresh all-time highs

on the lightest equity trading volumes of volumes since pre-Covid.

So even though I'd say like actual market liquidity and market debt has like recovered significantly

over this past six months, I'd say how we got here this week was on very light trading

volumes and just, I guess it's just a very light risk being moved in general.

I think if you break down the supply and demand for the stock market at the moment in terms of what we're seeing

on the floor.

Like on the demand side I'd note two kind of unusual sources of buying that might not be flagged

...