Europe

As we jokingly mocked the sterling-trading algos yesterday ahead of today's "big" Phase 1 Brexit announcement, the market had gotten too far ahead of itself in its exuberance that today's announcement was the final Brexit catalyst, when in reality it only sets the stage for the far more complex, trade-focused Phase II. As a result, and as we expected, GBP/USD had dropped 0.2% following a "sell the news" reversal which sent cable to multi-month highs. It then dropped even more, sliding 0.4% to 1.3420 after EU officials said it's not realistic to expect a trade deal with the U.K.

Gold demand increases along with uncertainty thanks to Trump, Brexit and North Korea

Authored by Dr. D via Raul Ilargi Meijer's The Automatic Earth blog,

Part 1 "Bitcoin Is A Trust Machine" here.

A day after labor unions warned that General Electric was planning thousands of job cuts in its troubled power-generation unit, GE confirmed that it’s planning to cut 12,000 jobs globally in its power business as the company’s new leadership tries to revive the company’s moribund stock price.

Once again weakness in the US carried through to Asia with stocks unable to hold any National-Team-inspired gains, but it was the contagion to commodities that was most notable (as a hike in exchange fees snuffed out a lot of speculative fervor)

• European equities have followed suit from their Asia-Pac counterparts to trade higher across the board
• Markets await Brexit headlines amid Barnier deadline
• Looking ahead, highlights include US weekly jobs and potential comments from ECB’s Draghi.

ASIA