Europe

U.K. leisure carrier Monarch Airlines filed for insolvency on Monday, the biggest ever failure of a British airline, stranding tens of thousands of travellers overseas and prompting the country’s biggest-ever peacetime repatriation effort, as the government has to find a way to to arrange the return of 110,000 tourists, and marking the third failure of a major European operator in five months. Monarch cancelled about 300,000 future bookings and apologized to customers and staff as it became the UK’s largest carrier to go into administration, according to Reuters.

While S&P futures were modestly higher, rising 0.1% in a quiet session in which China, South Korea, India and Hong Kong were closed for holidays, the Euro, Spanish stocks and bonds were broadly lower as Spain faces its worst constitutional crisis in years following a dramatic, violent crackdown on Sunday's Catalan independence referendum in which 89% of the voters wanted to secede from Spain.

For a new generation of nationalists (by which they clearly imply tin-foil-hat wearing, nazi-sympathizing, probably-drug-taking, conspiracy-theory-loving wonks), The FT's Gideon Rachman explains - for those not willing to think for themselves, or follow the money, that the billionaire investor has become the perfect villain...

George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, has had a busy year.

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

I’ve seen a lot of videos and photos of the Catalonia attempt to hold a referendum today (Tyler has a “nice” series of them), and what struck me most of all, apart from the senseless violence police forces were seen to engage in, is the lack of violence on the side of protesters.

Fascism has been rearing its ugly head all weekend in Spain and has delighted investors to no end. S&P futures are heading up now, +3 in early trade. Over in Europe, the optimism born in Spanish law and order has become somewhat infectious, delighting traders there to no end, sending DAX futs higher by 0.45%.

Gleaning from the good news in Europe, Asian markets are soon gearing up to rip ahead.

The copper trade is improving, as we speak, up by more than 0.8%.