Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The true face of the EU is presently on display in Greece, not in Germany or Holland or France. Brussels must first fix what’s going wrong in Athens and the Aegean, and there’s a lot going wrong, before it can move on towards the future, indeed towards any future at all. It has a very tough job in Italy as well, which it’s trying hard to ignore.
Below looks at the DAX index from Germany over the past decade. The DAX index looks to be creating a bullish continuation pattern, that the Power of the Pattern feels, is important to investors in Europe and the St
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE
Asian shares and oil are lower, European shares are little changed, and S&P futures are fractionally in the red after gaining for most of the overnight session, perhaps troubled by warnings from two Fed presidents who warned that markets and valuations appear frothy, and the Federal Reserve may have to raise rates more times than currently forecast. The latest round of Fed hawkishness helped the dollar gain further after recent losses which earlier this week pushed it to 4 month lows.
A couple of weeks ago we wrote several notes about German Chancellor Angela Merkel's painfully awkward visit to the White House. After meeting in private, the pair sat down in the oval office for a brief press conference where you could cut the tension with a knife. At one point someone from the media asked for a handshake but the request was promptly ignored.
"Can we get a handshake?"
*Merkel looks at Trump*
*Trump grins*
Asian shares and S&P futures rose on optimism that today's rescheduled U.S. vote on health care will pass following Trump's Ultimatum to the Freedom Caucus. European stocks gave up some of Thursday’s gains, falling for the fourth time in five days, and moving further away from a 15-month high reached a week ago while the yen weakened for the first time in nine days before the long awaited U.S. health-care vote that has dominated market sentiment this week. Oil was headed for a third weekly drop this month. Economic data include durable goods orders, Markit U.S. manufacturing PMI.