Europe

Someone didn’t read the refugee pool rules cartoon.

As you might have heard, quite a few of the millions of asylum seekers that have inundated Western Europe are having a rather difficult time adjusting. Specifically, there seems to be some confusion about pool etiquette.

Last month, Bornheim - a town of 48,000 some 30 km south of Cologne, Germany - banned adult male asylum seekers from the public swimming pool after numerous reports of sexual harassment and “chatting up” - whatever that means.

Iran enjoys trolling the United States. In fact, it’s something of hobby for the Ayatollah, who has maintained the country’s semi-official “death to America” slogan even as President Rouhani plays good cop with Obama and Kerry.

According to Morgan Stanley's European equity strategist, Graham Secker, we may have just hit peak bearishness. However, does that mean that a rebound in risk sentiment is imminent, or is this just the beginning of a multi-decade mean reversion, one that will seek to unwind years of central bank intervention, and push risk assets to their ex-central bank prop fair values?

We don't the answer just yet, although it seems unlikely that after one humiliating episode in recent months for the ECB, Fed and BOJ, each, they will simply pack up and go.

The earnings season has started, and several major banks in the Eurozone have already reported on how they performed in the fourth quarter of 2015, and the entire financial year. Most results were quite boring, but unfortunately Deutsche Bank once again had some bad news.

A Russian Ministry of Defense report states that America have conceded their total defeat in Afghanistan within hours of holding peace talks with the Taliban in the Pakistani capital city of Islamabad. At the same time the West have expressed concern that Russia’s ongoing defeat of ISIS in Syria is likely to have a huge impact on U.S.