United States

"Symbolizing how far the United States and Japan have come in building a deep and abiding alliance based on mutual interests, shared values and an enduring spirit of friendship between our people," according to The White House official statement, The Hill reports that Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning President Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, later this month. Is this merely continuing Obama's apology tour?

Remember how the Fed claimed it was embarking on a tightening cycle?

Well, the Fed failed to hike interest rates in January, March AND April despite the “data” hitting levels at which the Fed said it would hike. There is now talk of a potential hike in June… but the Fed futures indicate less than half of traders expect another hike before February 2017.

Over two years ago, and just days after Michael Lewis released Flash Boys focusing attention on the ongoing criminal practice of orderflow frontrunning by such Fed intermediaries as Citadel (and many other now entrenched and recently IPOing names), none other than Citadel's head of "Execution Services" which we supposed is the internal name of the firm's client-facing HFT group, Jamil Nazarali, proclaimed that small investors have never been so fortunate and said, with regard to Michael Lewis' now infamous book Flash Boys, "The most important thing that the market c

Iran says it is planning to sue the United States at the International Court of Justice at The Hague to prevent the distribution of nearly $2 billion in frozen assets from Iran’s central bank to compensate American victims of terror. In April the supreme Court ruled that Iran must pay the sum to survivors and relatives of those killed in attacks that they blamed on the Islamic republic. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said preparations are underway to file a lawsuit against the US administration for its decision to confiscate Tehran’s assets.

In what has been an approximate repeat of the Monday overnight session, global stocks and US futures rose around the world as oil prices climbed toward $44 a barrel, with risk-sentiment pushed higher by another plunge in the Yen which has now soared 300 pips since the Friday post-payroll kneejerk reaction, and was trading above 109.20 this morning.