Europe

Apple Inc. had hoped that its iPhone eight might demolish the company’s sales records in China as the country’s burgeoning middle class embraced the phone, thanks in part to its name: Eight is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture, signifying wealth and fortune.

Unfortunately for the world’s most valuable company, this calculus isn’t playing out as well as its massive marketing operation had hoped for one simple reason: The price of the phone is simply too high for most members of the company's target demographic.

In a somewhat quieter week for economic news, this week's focus is on BoE and SNB policy meetings as well as on inflation releases in US, UK, China and others. Other releases of note include retail sales in the US, UK and China along with industrial production in US, Eurozone & China.

Key events:

And we're back at all time highs.

As the two old, cold war adversaries, Russia and NATO, prepare to begin massive war games to show off their respective military strengths, it was the UK's turn to accuse Russia first of "testing the West" by conducting war games on NATO’s eastern flank in its biggest military exercise in four years. Speaking on BBC's “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday, U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said that Russia's exercise "is designed to provoke us, it’s designed to test our defenses, and that’s why we have to be strong.

Authored by Matthew Jamison via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The hackneyed international billionaire enigma known by the name of George Soros (redolent of the James Bond villain Blofeld – the head of the sinister shadow government organisation Spectre – in Ian Fleming’s novels) is up to his old tricks yet again in stirring up tensions and trouble to suit his own warped personal, political and financial agenda.