Europe

One day after stocks were this close from hitting new all time highs on what have been either ok earnings, if looking at non-GAAP data, or atrocious earnings, based on GAAP, and where any oil headline is now immediately translated as bullish by the oil algos, so far futures are relatively flat, while European stocks were at their moments ago in anticipation of the latest ECB announcement due out in just one hour.  However, unlike last month's "quad-bazooka", this time the market expects far less from Draghi.

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Most people are not avid followers of economic news, and I don’t blame them. Financial analysis is for the most part boring and tedious and you would have to be some kind of crazy to commit a large slice of your life to it.

McDonalds have been fined $341 million dollars (300 million euros) for unpaid taxes in France after French discovered that the fast food corporation had funnelled cash through Luxembourg and Switzerland as part of a huge tax avoidance scheme.  French authorities have accused the fast food giant of taking advantage of a Luxembourg-based entity, McD Europe Franchising, in order to dump their profits and fool the government. Reuters.com reports: McDonald’s France declined to comment on developments in the ongoing French tax investigation, first reported in 2014.

While trying to make sense of the "market" seems like a lost cause today more than ever, and it certainly led Bloomberg's Richard Breslow to flip out on Monday, here is Breslow again, stoically trying to uncover the fundamental logic in what has devolved to nothing more than carefully calculated central banker verbal outbursts (and in some cases, actions) and the corresponding pre-programmed algorithmic reactions to a flurry of headlines. Which, incidentally, is precisely his lament today: that trading has devolved to doing noting more than reacting to flashing red headlines.