Stoxx 600

After a kneejerk move lower in the Euro, tumbling briefly as low as 1.1930 when Mario Draghi made an explicit reference to the strength of the Euro in his prepared remarks, stating that "the recent volatility in the exchange rate represents a source of uncertainty which requires monitoring with regard to its possible implications for the medium-term outlook for price stability", the EURUSD has since surged more than 100 pips, and was up to 1.2050, nearing the 2017 high of 1.2070 during the Q&A part of today's press conference which has been dubbed "pret

S&P futures are flat, still spooked by the WSJ's report that Gary Cohn will not be the next Fed chair, while both European stocks and Asian shares gain in a overnight session on edge in which everyone is looking forward to today's main risk event: the ECB meeting and Draghi press conference due in under two hours. The dollar continued to weaken against most G-10 peers as tensions over North Korea, concerns over Stan Fischer's resignation and the increasingly cloudy Fed outlook outweighed positive sentiment from the US debt ceiling extension.

Yesterday morning, with the US closed for holiday but with S&P futures trading modestly lower on the latest set of North Korean geopolitical fears, we asked "is this time different", referencing last week's similar setup, when futures gapped lower on Monday after the Kim regime shot a missile over Japan, only to surge into the end of the week.

Having started off with a sharp gap lower following Sunday's news of the latest, 6th nuclear test by North Korea, global stocks and US futures pared losses in the overnight session, despite reports of North Korean preparations for yet another missile launch, while the yen trimmed its risk-off gains even as gold kept its upside and the South Korean Kospi closing 1.2% lower, with traders asking whether "this time will be different:, or inversely, will today's market reaction will be a carbon copy of what happened last Monday, when stocks gapped sharply lower on North Korea mi

With payrolls looming (our full preview is here), carbon-based traders around the globe are leery of putting on any major trades and so the overnight session has been rather dull, dominated by the now traditional overnight algo-mediated levitation, which means the VIX is lower and S&P futures are once again modest higher as European and Asian shares continue their ascent.