Eco-Data

So what turned ES?

Consumer Price Index 8:30
Released On 5/15/2012 8:30:00 AM For Apr, 2012

	Prior	Consensus	Consensus Range	Actual
CPI - M/M change	0.3 %	0.0 %	-0.1 % to 0.4 %	0.0 %
CPI less food & energy	0.2 %	0.2 %	0.0 % to 0.2 %	0.2 %

This came in at consensus

April Retail Sals 8:30

Released On 5/15/2012 8:30:00 AM For Apr, 2012

Prior Consensus Consensus Range Actual Retail Sales - M/M change 0.8 % 0.1 % -0.3 % to 0.8 % 0.1 % Retail Sales less autos - M/M change 0.8 % 0.2 % -0.4 % to 0.8 % 0.1 % Less Autos & Gas - M/M Change 0.7 % 0.3 % -0.2 % to 0.5 % 0.1 %

Retail Sales headline print came in at consensus, "Less Auto's" missed, "Less Autos and gas" missed even bigger. Not a good report overall.

Empire State Manufacturing Survey

Released On 5/15/2012 8:30:00 AM For May, 2012 Prior Consensus Consensus Range Actual General Business Conditions Index - Level 6.56  10.00  2.00  to 15.00  17.09

The headline print was a beat over consensus and prior. New Orders and Shipments are picking up momentum, number of employees are up and there's easing in price pressure. Inventories are up. This appears to be a good report, the devil is in the details, the 6 month outlook is not good, you can get it straight from the NY F_E_D right here.

Now for Greece...

As expected, the meeting between the Greek President and the top 3 parties in the vote failed to reach any agreement to form a unity government and Greece is heading to elections in which Syriza will surely win; not good news for the Troika, Germany, the Euro-zone, etc.

In the meantime, until elections, a caretaker government will be appointed tomorrow.

And why does the Euro look like this after having crossed the resistance trendline from all of last week?

One word, "Syriza". Since Syriza shocked the world and defied the polls coming in second place beating out PASOK and with the all of the "Anti-Bailot" parties gathering about 60% of the vote, preventing New Democracy and PASOK from forming a coalition government by a handful of seats lost in the election; Syriza has been gaining about 1% point in the pols EVERY DAY and it looks like new elections held in mid-June will see Syriza gather enough votes to control parliament on their own with no coalition government. You saw the letter Syriza leader Tsipras sent to the Trokia delegation, in no way was it modest or conciliatory. Tsipras pretty much said exactly what he would do and that creates a huge problem for the Euro-zone task masters, it's even likely they take a TOTAL loss on Greece and then there's the unintended or unanticipated consequences. The market hates uncertainty, this is uncertainty at its height.

This pretty much explains why the EUR/USD looks the way it does, however it's still a bit surprising that the markt wouldn't have discounted this, it was predictable since the first day after the elections Monday a week ago.