Europe

"...a quadrillion here, a quadrillion there... and pretty soon you're talking real money!"

For the first time in history, foreign assets held by Japanese institutional and individual investors appear to have topped 1,000 trillion yen ($8.79 trillion), according to Nikkei estimates.

The amount has increased roughly 50% during the past five years and now is more than twice as much as the country's gross domestic product.

Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

Empires get stupider and more corrupt as they age..

ECB President Mario Draghi is now walking back QE.

This is not a surprise to our readers. I’ve been forecasting this exact development, (as well as the Euro's spike to 120) since August 2016 (by the way, the Euro was at 109 back then everyone thought it would soon reach parity with the $USD as it collapsed).

Still, why is Draghi doing this?

Because the bond market was in revolt, with yields beginning to rise. Rising yields= falling bonds prices. Falling bond prices over time= bear market in bonds. Bear market in bonds = SYSTEMIC reset.

Gold will be safe haven again in looming EU crisis

US equity futures and Asian shares are flat this morning with European shares treading water ahead of the ECB's policy meeting in which it’s expected to announce a tapering to its €60bn in monthly QE. On this busiest day of Q3 earnings season, companies set to report earnings include Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Intel, while we also get data on jobless claims and wholesale inventories.