Overnight

We start in China, as futures slowly melt up, where Chinese imports fell apart and exports surged as Soc. Gen. has said is a harbinger of economic weakness, which led to another Shanghai red close. Then we jet over to Europe where UK Construction Data dropped by nearly 8% (7.9). The Bank of Italy said January Small Business lending was down by -2.8%, Austria printed a negative for Q4 GDP, Spanish Industrial Output dropped by 5% in January while German Industrial Production printed at 0 on consensus of +.4. Finally the ECB announced that banks will repay $4.2 billion in LTRO 1&2 loans, about half of what was expected which contradicts the strength Draghi claimed yesterday in LTRO re-payments.

The reason none of this mattered overnight... The same pivotal asset I have been talking about all week, the Japanese Yen.

Yen plunges overnight

At 8:30 US payrolls blew away consensus at 236k (expected 165k) with January revised from 157k to 119k, the UE rate dropped from 7.9 to 7.7, but a usual there was another drop in the labor force.

However this isn't all good news to the market, the immediate question... "Will the F_E_D start tightening sooner?"

Look at ES...

Not quite the party one might have expected on the jobs...

Perhaps more important to all those fearing the open... the EUR/USD

As suspected yesterday for different reasons, the Euro plunge on the news and USd flew higher, NOT GOOD for STOCKS. And we are now below $1.30 again.

Price is always deceptive, give it a few minutes to work through a.m. trade before hitting the panic button.

More to come