presidential election

As the political scandal gripping (former) French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon grows, his public support is tumbling and according to a new opinion poll released on Wednesday, the conservative presidential candidate would no longer even make the second round of this spring's presidential election in France, raising the pressure on him as a scandal over his wife and children's publicly funded "fae work" engulfed his campaign.

Just yesterday we noted that, according to a Rasmussen poll, while the vocal, and often violent, disaffected Hillary protesters may get a lot of media attention, the silent majority of Americans, men and women who don't have time to protest 24 hours a day because they actually go to work to provide for their families, support Trump's temporary immigration ban from 7 mostly-Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa.

President Putin has accused the CIA of infiltrating Russia’s intelligence agency and paying Russian spies to hand over top-secret intelligence to the U.S. government. Two senior cybersecurity specialists working for Russia’s spy agency, the FSB, have been arrested and detained by the Kremlin on charges of “breaking their oath” by disclosing State secrets to the CIA. Foreignpolicy.com reports: Sergei Mikhailov, allegedly detained at a board meeting last December, and his deputy, Dmitry Dokuchaev, were arrested by the Kremlin on Jan. 27 for treason and illegal hacking.

Last week we reported that in the aftermath of a report by the Canard Enchaine newspaper, French financial prosecutors had launched an informal probe into possible misuse of public funds by French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon, who was accused of paying his wife around €500,000 over a period of ten years.

With the S&P500 ending January on the back foot, more pain may be in store for markets in February.

This is the observation of BofA's chief technician Stephen Suttmeyer, who provides several danger signals why bulls may want to be particularly cautious ahead of the coming months.

As he notes, the post-Presidential Election S&P 500 rally has done better than the post-Brexit rally, but there are warning signs moving into February just as there were coming off the mid-August post-Brexit S&P 500 peak.