Europe

With the rise of communist candidate Melenchon throwing the French election results into disarray for the status quo supporters, it appears traders are rushing headlong for the safety of core-core Europe and rapidly exiting anything to do with France.

As reported in our overnight wrap, the recent surge in far-left candidate Melenchon has changed the French presidential election calculus materially in recent days, sending the spread between French and German 10Y blowing out again, helped by yesterday's Goldman downgrade of French OATs.

With volume starting to fade ahead of Friday's holiday, and geopolitical concerns growing as a US aircraft carrier approaches North Korean, S&P futures pointed to a slightly lower open, in line with stock markets in Europe and Asia. Safe havens such as gold and treasuries strengthened along with Japanese yen, which erased all of yesterday's losses and neared its 110 support on investor caution about global security risks and the future of U.S. interest rates after Yellen's Monday speech failed to provide clarity.

Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Islamic State (IS) fighters are trying to flee Mosul. No doubt, the US-supported Iraqi forces will establish control over the city pretty soon. At first, IS militants will leave Iraq for the province of Deir-ez-Zor, Syria, to intensify fighting there. But with Syria no longer a safe haven, they’ll have to move elsewhere looking for weak points, like the countries of Maghreb.

In early March, Goldman's John Marshall looked at the firm's proprietary macro hedging indicator and found something peculiar: investors were buying stocks and discarding protection. As Marshall said at the time, this was a reflection of "How Trump Changed the Market", and said added that "the cost of liquid long-dated hedges in equity and credit has collectively reached its lowest level in six years following the decline this week. The last time macro hedge costs were near this level across assets was in July 2015."

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

It’s not a story that’s likely to appear on the evening news, but it certainly should.

Deutsche Bank has announced that it will create more shares, selling them at a 35% discount. Existing shareholders have not been pleased and, in the first four days since the offer was announced, the value of existing shares dropped by 13% as shareholders began dumping them.