FTSE 100

British education group, and the world's largest education company, Pearson PLC lost a quarter of its market cap in an instant this morning after it issued a dire warning about the state of the textbook business, cut profit forecast, and warned of an "unprecedented" decline in its North American business. It also put its stake in the iconic Penguin Random House book business for sale in a bid to raise cash, not long after selling the Financial Times to the Nikkei.

While traders eagerly await Theresa May's speech set to begin in minutes, even if it was largely leaked last night to minimize "market shocks" and set the stage for a big squeeze in cable which at last check was over 100 pips higher overnight, the big catalyst setting today's risk off mood was the previously noted Trump statement, published overnight by the WSJ, in which Trump called the US currency "too strong", and attacked the Border-Tax Adjustment, expected to boost the value of the USD by as much as 15% should it be implemented.

While US markets take the day off for MLK holiday, the rest of the trading world has been busy, perhaps nowhere more so than the sterling which continued its volatile session in advance of May's pre-hard Brexit speech, falling below $1.20 for the first time since October after the Sunday Times said May is ready to withdraw from tariff-free trade with the region in return for the ability to curb immigration and strike commercial deals with other countries.

With the mainstream media crowing proudly of the record 14-day winning-streak in Britain's FTSE 100 stock index (up 18 of the 19 days since The Fed hiked rates), we thought it worth a look at just what is going on in good ol' blighty...

Since the Brits voted for Brexit, the FTSE 100 is up an elite-embarrassing 15.5% and is on an unstoppable charge since The Fed raised rates for the second time in a decade...

European shares rose as Fiat rebounded on hopes concerns about parallel to Volkswagen are overblown, Asian stocks were little as Chinese shares fell to the lowest level of 2017 after poor export data, and U.S. equity-index futures rose ahead of a deluge of bank earnings. The dollar is headed for a weekly loss and gold trades at the highest price in almost two months.