United Kingdom

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.

British politician George Galloway has warned Donald Trump the American deep state is engaged in a “soft coup d’etat” and the CIA is planning to assassinate him. “There is a clear and present danger on his life. If I were him, I wouldn’t be going near any grassy knolls. I wouldn’t be on any motorcades in Dallas. I wouldn’t be traveling in an open-top car. “I’d be very careful if I was Donald Trump about my personal security.

Authored by Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks,

In August, I mentioned that I had chosen the title “Political Reality” for my memo in part because of my liking for oxymorons.  I classed that title with other internally contradictory statements, such as “jumbo shrimp” and “common sense.”  Now I’m going to discuss one more: “expert opinion.”

In two separate, and quite striking, interviews with Germany's Bild (paywall) and London's Sunday Times (paywall), Donald Trump did what he failed to do in his first US press conference, and covered an extensive amount of policy and strategy, much of which however will likely please neither the pundits, nor the markets.

As the National Health Service crisis deepens, over 20 hospitals in England have been forced to declare a ‘black alert’. NHS England classifies a black alert as a “serious incident” meaning the system is such under severe pressure that it is unable to deliver certain actions and comprehensive emergency care. At least 23 hospitals have been forced to issue the warning declaring that they cannot cope with increasingly overwhelming patient numbers, meaning that patient safety can no longer be guaranteed.