European Central Bank

From Keith Decker of IceCap Asset Management

“The Beautician”

In 1888, Martha Matilda Harper became the world’s first professional beautician. In addition to inventing the first reclining shampoo chair, Ms. Harper became famous for opening the first ever, stand alone beauty salon.

Next up to dominate the industry was Elizabeth Arden. Her success was founded upon expanding the salon concept to 1000s of stores around the world, and for the distribution of her self made products, most notably lipstick.

Two weeks after the first, and biggest, European bank bail-in took place under the relatively new European bank resolution mechanism, the EBRD, when Spain's Banco Popular wiped out the holders of its most risky securities, including equity and AT bonds, and then selling what was left of the bank to Santander for €1 - a process that took place without a glitch -  Italy may have just killed any hope of a European banking union, when the bailout of two small banks made a "mockery" of Europe's new regulation.

One of the reasons for the recent historic flattening in yield curves is not just the ongoing disappointment in inflation prints which have missed expectations for the past three months, but also the ECB's recent sharp downward revision to its inflation forecasts, which as it revealed in its latest policy meeting, were cut across the board, with HICP now expected to drop from 1.6% to 1.3% in 2018, sending Bund yields tumbling.

That the sharp drop took place even with the ECB's balance sheet rising to record highs of €4.232 trillion as of the latest week...

As the Fed begins its two-day meeting, global stocks have recovered their footing and European shares rise, led by a bounce in tech stocks as last Friday's global selloff that started in the sector shows signs of abating. Asian stocks and U.S. futures gain as investors turn their attention to today's Jeff Sessions testimony as well as tomorrow's barrage of macro data including Yellen, CPI and retail sales.

"Triple Threat Thursday" is now a distant memory, with both the ECB and Comey testimony "non-events" for the market, although the UK general election was a shocker in which contrary to expectations, Theresa May lost her majority in Parliament, sending sterling tumbling overnight and prompting even more confusion about the UK's political fate and the future of Brexit. That however did not spook risk assets, and on Friday morning, European stocks gained with Asian stocks little changed, while S&P500 futures were set for new all time highs. Just like after Brexit, it was U.K.