Congratulations to Albert Edwards who this morning announced that he has once again placed first in the 2017 Extel Survey of analysts in the Global Strategy category, for the record 14th year in a row.
EURUSD tumbled this morning, erasing the gains following US payrolls weakness on Friday, after reports that officials familiar with the matter said the ECB’s draft projections show slower consumer-price growth in the three years through 2019 versus March forecasts.
http://www.bloomberg.com/api/embed/iframe
The number of S&P 500 companies reporting negative earnings is rising rapidly.
Why does this matter?
It matters because this usually signals right before a stock market peak.
Below is a chart illustrating the percentage of S&P 500 companies reporting negative earnings running back to 1999.
As you can see, we are now at levels that have usually occurred just before stock market peaks (the last two times we were at these levels were 2007 and 2000, respectively).
Just four days after Banco UnPopular chairman Emilio Saracho told his employees "don't panic" as a result of the company's crashing stock price, on Wednesday morning the ECB confirmed that the sixth largest Spanish bank was indeed on the verge of collapse and ordered it to be sold, which is what happened when Santander acquired the bank for €1.00 after Santander's equity and riskiest debt instruments were bailed-in, i.e. wiped out, imposing losses of about €3.3 billion on the bank’s securities holders.
European and Asian stocks, as well as S&P futures were little changed ahead of "Super Thursday's" events which include the U.K. general election, Comey's testimony and the ECB policy decision. That however may change following a Bloomberg news report that the ECB is set to cut inflation forecasts through 2019 due to weaker energy prices, suggesting the "hawkish" ECB announcement some had expected tomorrow has been postponed.