Europe

Judging by the 200 pip tumble since the ECB's meeting on Thursday, the EURUSD was at 1.1614 moments ago, the unexpectedly dovish taper clearly surprised many, and attention has fallen on the open-ended nature of the operation as the focus of that surprise. And speaking of said "open-ended" taper, overnight Boersen-Zeitung reported that Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, Executive Board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger and Dutch central bank Governor Klaas Knot all opposed Draghi's decision.

US equity futures are higher, boosted by a bevy of better than expected earnings out of tech giants Amazon, Intel and Microsoft as Asian stocks and European shares climb amid the dovish sentiment unleashed from Thursday’s ECB update.

Authored by Bruce Bawer via The Gatestone Institute,

"...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.