If you like flashes there's plenty to go around.
The flash purchasing managers' report for China recently came in lower than expected and the flash PMI for the Eurozone block of currencies in July dropped to 52.8 from 53.8, not a sign good for EU manufacturing.
Still above the benchmark 50 level that tell if an expansion is still in progress, it's a subdued number given all the other issues floating around today. these are the kind of concerns that will put further pressure on the ECB to get more aggressive in its monetary policy.
Bond investors showed their hand in this call by pushing yield on many bonds to record lows. the Spanish 10-year bond yield fell to a record euro-era low of 2.37 percent.
Much of the gloom is now fostering talk about the EU going into a Japanese-style lost decade, hardly soothing to ECB bankers as the pressure on them mounts for what would be in the eyes of many QE to the rescue too late.
Meanwhile, on a broader scale, here's a headline from today's Financial Times, "Geopolitical threats knock executives' confidence."
The proportion of executives who believed the global environment would worsen over the next six months has nearly doubled to 18 per cent, nearly one in five respondents, from just 9 per cent at the end of last year, according to the Times.
One of the fears it seems is the growing concern abut a Russia-West trade war and now growing worries about Brazil, one of the BRIC nations, and South America's largest economy. Brazil's friendliness meter seems to have taken a turn for the worse, many executives believe. this slide in confidence has happened over the past two years.
So the water filled balloon is going to get pushed one way or the other. It's going to be fun seeing where it bulges next.
t. man hatter
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