Europe

Despite US markets being closed in observance of Washington's birthday, S&P futures spiked during overnight trading, reaching new all time highs before fading some of the gains. Both Asian and European markets traded modestly higher after paring early gains. The U.S. dollar traded in a tight range ahead of a busy week for Federal Reserve events, while the pound rallied the most in more than two weeks ahead of a House of Lords Brexit debate, while South Africa’s rand fell on political turmoil. Oil advanced for a third day and spot gold rose for the fourth session in five.

There are concerns about a potential nuclear ‘incident’ in Europe. According to reports, small amounts of highly radioactive radioisotope, iodine-131, of unknown origin, have been detected over large areas of Europe. A nuclear ‘incident’ in the vicinity of the Arctic circle may have spread the mysterious radioactive leak during the past week.

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

I was recently sent a research piece by one of my LPs.

The piece was from the principal of a well known hedge fund and this particular manager has grave concerns for the US stock market. In the article to clients he laid out all the reasons why fundamentally none of it makes much sense. I can't and won't disagree with the primary analysis.

He's not the only one.

Amid implicit acknowledgement of turmoil in The White House, Trump's Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reassured the world that the US military was "not in disarray", but was "holding the line" as government "sorts out the way ahead."

After shrugging off President Trump's 'media as enemy' narrative:

//www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/231ac5f6-f6bd-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334

The Trump-Putin honeymoon continues to chill... that is if Trump's top foreign policy advisors speak for the president, which remains very much unclear.