Nikkei 225

In the aftermath of last week's disappointing G-20 Shanghai summit, there was much riding on this weekend's start of the China's People's Congress, and specifically what if any stimulus announcement Beijing will make; sadly for stimulus addicts China mostly disappointed and after the unimaginative scope of growth proposals, it is hardly surprising that European stocks and US equity futures have taken a leg lower, even if Chinese stocks rose and certain commodities such as Iron Ore soared overnight on hopes China will either "rationalize" capacity or at least build some more roads to nowhere

Moments ago, for some unexplained reason, the St.Louis Fed - which recently issued a research report which "discovered" that "Consumers Across The Country Are Borrowing More To Buy Cars And Go To School" - on its twitter account asked a simple question: "See how the ECB's assets are growing?"

See how the European Central Bank's assets are growing https://t.co/cjQBj8y2VP pic.twitter.com/ozbnMU7Kh0

— St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) March 5, 2016

There is an odd feeling of Deja QEu this morning, when with two hours to go until the February payrolls, global stocks are modestly higher, US equity futures are likewise slightly higher on the back of a weaker dollar (or perhaps stronger Euro following a Market News report according to which the ECB may disappoint, more on that shortly), but it is gold that is breaking out, and after entering a bull market yesterday when it rallied 20% from its December lows...

While Asian stocks continued their longest rally since August overnight, led higher for the third consecutive day on the back of Japan (+1.3%), Australia (+1.2%) and China (+0.4%) strength, European stocks have as of this moment halted their longest rally since October (Stoxx -0.1%) and U.S. index futures are little changed.

Following yesterday's torrid 2.4% March opening rally, which resulted in the biggest S&P gain since January and the best first day of March in history on what was initially seen as very bad news, and then reinterpreted as great news, overnight futures have taken a breather, and erased a modest overnight continuation rally to track the price of oil lower.