Europe

Two weeks after winning the Turkish constitutional referendum by a modest but decisive margin, president - or perhaps it is now despot - Erdogan decided to take his newly decreed powers for a spin and overnight in rapid succession surprised foreign observers when Turkey decreed that it would ban TV dating shows, fire an additional 4,000 public officials and also ban Wikipedia.

TURKEY BANS DATING PROGRAMS ON TV AND RADIO: OFFICIAL GAZETTE

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 29, 2017

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Last year, when the people of the United Kingdom voted in favor of leaving the European Union, the Establishment in Europe and the United States was stunned. All the polls had predicted a win for the Remain camp. Everyone who counted, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, made it clear that staying within the increasingly dysfunctional EU was the only acceptable option.

Forget the "great rotation" out of bonds into stocks: 6 months into the so-called reflation trade, which so many strategists predicted would unleash a new era of euphoric stock buying driven by bond sales, it just isn't happening; in fact bonds have seen fund inflows on 17 of the last 18 weeks. Instead, two other "great rotations" have emerged: one out of "active management" into passive, or hedge funds to ETFs, while the other - more recent one - is out of various asset classes and into Europe.

Authored by James Bambino via Platts blog,

This is the third and final segment of a three-part look at why oil prices have failed to rally despite OPEC’s best efforts at managing supply cuts. Not only have prices failed to rally, both NYMEX WTI and ICE Brent have fallen around 9% over the past three weeks. In case you missed them, be sure to read part 1 and part 2.

Refiners do what is in their best interest, too.

Despite yesterday's whopping beats by Amazon and Google which sent the Nasdaq to new record highs after hours, and brought Jeff Bezos "this close" to overtaking Bill Gates as the world's richest man, this morning futures S&P futures are little changed ahead of the closely watched Q1 GDP report, European stocks and Asian equities are slightly lower, oil is higher after Russia's energy minister Novak said Russia had reached the 300kbpd oil cut per the OPEC pact, and the dollar was modestly in the red.