A funny thing happened at 1101ET. Amid the deep plunge in stocks, 'someone' suddenly traded an enormous block of e-mini S&P futures which appeared to stall the sell-off (for now). This followed a similar (but smaller) block trade at 1042ET which also extracted all the liquidity from the market momentarily and enabled a brief rally.

That is twice we have seen a big block followed by a rally in futures...

and a close up shows the shocking ripple as liquidity was sucked away by the huge block trade...

Saudi Arabia just doesn’t know when to quit. 

The kingdom’s plan to deliberately suppress crude prices in an effort to bankrupt the US shale space and preserve market share has cost Riyadh dearly over the past 12 months. The country’s budget deficit for 2015 ballooned to some 15% of GDP as oil revenue collapsed. For 2016, the deficit is expected to come in at a still elevated 13% of economic output.

A Sudanese man has been granted asylum in the UK after he was arrested walking the length of the Channel Tunnel from France to England last August. The Guardian reports: Abdul Haroun, who was arrested at the English end of the tunnel in August and charged with obstructing a railway under an obscure 19th-century law, has been held in prison since then. He was to face trial this month.

A high flying female executive of the British multinational retailer, Marks & Spencer, has been dismissed from her job for allegedly using racist language at work. The Daily Mail reports: Suzanna Broer, 33, was said to have been fired for ‘gross misconduct’ in November, less than a month after she oversaw the launch of the new reward card. It comes after a tough festive period for M&S, with some forecasters predicting the retail giant will report up to a 5.5 per cent drop in like-for-like sales.

The British prime minister has been urged to clarify the role the UK Government played in voting Saudi Arabia on to the UN Human Rights Council. The leaders of the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats are calling on David Cameron to come clean on the issue. The calls follow the kingdom’s execution of 47 people in a single day which sparked outrage across the Middle East.