FTSE 100

Just as US equity futures were about to roll over following some very substantial misses yesterday by the likes of Google, Microsoft, Starbucks and a plunge in Visa shares, overnight who came to the markets' rescue but the BOJ, when shortly after midnight Bloomberg reported that "according to people familiar with talks at the BOJ" which is the traditional keyword for a BOJ source testing out the market's reaction, Japan's central bank may "help" local banks to lend by offering a negative rate on some loans.

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.

The biggest catalyst for overnight markets, first reported on this site, was the announcement by Kuwait that its oil workers had ended their strike which disrupted oil production in the 4th largest OPEC producer for 3 days cutting it by as much as 1.7 mmb/d, and had served to offset the negative news from the Doha debacle. Kuwait Petroleum also added that it would boost output to 3m b/d within 3 days, which in turn has pressured the price of oil overnight, and the May WTI contract was back to just over $40 at last check, sliding 2%.

Overnight a historic event took place when China, the world's top gold consumer, launched a yuan-denominated gold benchmark as had been previewed here previously, in what Reuters dubbed "an ambitious step to exert more control over the pricing of the metal and boost its influence in the global bullion market." Considering the now officially-confirmed rigging of the gold and silver fix courtesy of last week's Deutsche Bank settlement, this is hardly bad news and may finally lead to some rigging cartel and central bank-free price discovery.

If asking traders where stocks and oil would be trading one day after a weekend in which the Doha OPEC meeting resulted in a spectacular failure, few if any would have said the S&P would be over 2,100, WTI would be back over $40 and the VIX would be about to drop to 12 and yet that is precisely where the the S&P500 is set to open today, hitting Goldman's year end target 8 months early, and oblivious of the latest batch of poor earnings news, this time from Intel and Netflix, both of which are sharply down overnight.