A.M. Update

I hope you all had a great weekend.

The big news over the weekend seems to be the Scottish independence referendum on Sept. 18th which has largely been ignored while the sterling has lost quite a bit of ground over the last couple of months. Through the overnight session GBP/USD lost 200 pips at one point as a poll came in showing a majority of voters would be inclined to break away and vote for independence. It seems currencies and this story in particular are where most of the overnight action has been.

Also China and Korea were closed overnight with China re-opening tomorrow and Korea on Thursday.

Speaking of China, they reported a $49.8 bn trade surplus and Germany reported a $100 bn Euro trade surplus for July which is a record high, however the US is running a trade deficit causing a few people to wonder where all of these Chinese and German exports are going.

Japanese Q2 GDP was revised down overnight from -6.8 to -7.1.

The Hang Seng is down -20 the Nikkei up .23 and Europe in the red with FTSE -.83, the DAX -.16 and the CAC-40 -.48.

Late Friday, unlike most Fridays after the weekly/standard op-ex pin is lifted around 2 p.m., there weren't any strong short term divergences that usually guide trade for the week, especially early on and my opinion was "More of the same", at least early on in the week and an expectation that the August cycle will move to stage 4 decline some time this week. So far the market is pretty close to flat, which is, thus far, the lateral chop/top or more of the same since last week.

AAPL will unveil the IP-6 tomorrow with an informal survey conducted with 66% of the small sample saying they'd be buying the IP6, while 75% of the sample said they'd be replacing their IP5's with the IP6. Perhaps we'll see some action on those AAPL calls from Friday.

We'll see what the open looks like, I do still expect some sort of head fake move, but will be watching for any signs of strength in any of the levers like HYG or the carry trades, otherwise it may be up to AAPL or perhaps like 2007's top, there just is none.

Have a great day.