United Kingdom

While hardly coming as much of a a surprise following the weekend's news that Theresa May would call for a "clean and hard Brexit", confirmation received moments ago from both the Telegraph, FT and Bloomberg that on Tuesday May will indeed declare that Britain is making a "clean break" from the EU and will not seek a deal that leaves the country “half in and half out”, has send the sterling lower by some 25 pips, because even though the news is not incremental, as Bloomberg notes quoting a trader, "Algos Trade Off Keyword Flagged in Speech."

While US markets take the day off for MLK holiday, the rest of the trading world has been busy, perhaps nowhere more so than the sterling which continued its volatile session in advance of May's pre-hard Brexit speech, falling below $1.20 for the first time since October after the Sunday Times said May is ready to withdraw from tariff-free trade with the region in return for the ability to curb immigration and strike commercial deals with other countries.

British politician George Galloway has warned Donald Trump the American deep state is engaged in a “soft coup d’etat” and the CIA is planning to assassinate him. “There is a clear and present danger on his life. If I were him, I wouldn’t be going near any grassy knolls. I wouldn’t be on any motorcades in Dallas. I wouldn’t be traveling in an open-top car. “I’d be very careful if I was Donald Trump about my personal security.

Authored by Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks,

In August, I mentioned that I had chosen the title “Political Reality” for my memo in part because of my liking for oxymorons.  I classed that title with other internally contradictory statements, such as “jumbo shrimp” and “common sense.”  Now I’m going to discuss one more: “expert opinion.”

In two separate, and quite striking, interviews with Germany's Bild (paywall) and London's Sunday Times (paywall), Donald Trump did what he failed to do in his first US press conference, and covered an extensive amount of policy and strategy, much of which however will likely please neither the pundits, nor the markets.