Europe

Welcome to the one year anniversary of the Brexit vote. Welcome also to the annual Russell rebalance, traditionally one of the busiest trading days of the year: according to Bloomberg, last year's rebalance helped propel a near record turnover of over 15 billion shares, as a result of the $8.5 trillion in stocks linked to the various Russell indices, many of which will be forced to find new owners after today's index recomposition. In fact, in four of the last five years, reconstitution day ranked in the 10 busiest trading sessions.

Authored by Maco Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) is planning for a massive solar storm that would be so strong, it would take down the power grid.

Noting that the rare, yet “high-consequence” scenario has “the potential for catastrophic impact on our nation and FEMA’s ability to respond.”

The median age in most areas of the US is rising, while the population is growing more diverse, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday. America’s median age - the age where half of the population is half younger and half older - rose from 35.3 years on April 1, 2000, to 37.9 years on July 1, 2016, according to the data. Meanwhile, the population of White Americans is growing at a much slower rate than most minority groups: The number of whites living in the US increased by 0.5% last year to 256 million.

Oil bounced a bit (on Saudi noise)... banks dropped (ahead of CCAR)... Healthcare ripped again (on a bill that appears to be DOA)... and stocks gave up hope in the last few minutes...

Just this morning we reported that as the global equity research market wrestles with how it will comply with the EU's MiFID II regulations, in a new study McKinsey said that banks will have no choice but to fire a ton of equity research analysts who write a bunch of stuff that no one ever reads...which seems like a reasonable guess.