Pre-Market

Today is the third anniversary of the "FLASH CRASH", that still unknown, un-investigated, non-consequential event when they either didn't understand the power of HFTs or just wanted to threaten the market with it, you don't think so? Why does the US Attorney General, Eric Holder say that, "Some banks are too big to prosecute" ?  Well, it's a holiday shortened week so if you're interested you can look in to the official version and check out why the US AG is afraid to prosecute people like Jamie Dimon who conveniently wasn't prosecuted on "Silver Manipulation" charges, it was thrown out of court! LOL! 

Remember last night I said I didn't see strong signals in the Euro or the $USD, but I did see some that looked like the $AUD would head lower? Well, it did and here's why... Chinese Service PMI, dropped from 54.3 to 51.1, with the lowest print in two years, then we got Australian retail sales which dropped -0.1% on expectations of 0.4% gain, presto! A Falling $AUD as the entire region seems to be falling apart under the breakup of the Chinese growth juggernaut. 

European non-manufacturing PMI data came in starting with Spain, at 44.4, down from 45.3, the lowest since December, Italy Service PMI printing at 47.0, up from 45.5, on expectations of a 45.8 print, the highest since August 2011, French Services PMI rising modestly from 44.1 to 44.3, Germany's up from 49.2 to 49.6, on expectations of an unchanged print, all of which leading to a combined Eurozone PMI at 47.0, up from 46.6, and beating expectations of a 46.6 print. The retail sales data posted yet another drop of 0.1% in March, and a decline of 2.4% compared to last year, on expectations of "just" a 2.2% drop.

Somewhat hilariously for Angela Merkel this week,  Oskar Lafontaine who was Germany's Finance Minister who oversaw the creation of the Euro recently (this weekend) called for the breakup of the Euro. On the heels of that we get ECB member Coeure saying the central bank can cut rates again if the economy worsens and just for good measure continuing Merkel antagonism (which will not go unpunished by Herr Fraulien), France made sure to antagonize Germany even more as FinMin Moscovici declared the era of austerity is over on German flexibility. "We’re witnessing the end of the dogma of austerity” as the only tool to fight the euro debt crisis, Moscovici said yesterday on Europe 1 radio. “We’ve been pleading for a growth policy for a year. Austerity on its own impedes growth." 

Merkel on the topic of austerity, added that EU countries must live within their means and that Europeans disagree on analysis of debt crisis, that's the warm up round, the next will come from the Troika itself.

In any case, the EUR/USD did move down a little last night, right now there's no real clear signal on the pair or the Euro, the $USD does look like it wants to pop early in the session, but these are intraday signals that change quickly. The $AUD doesn't look like it's done with the downdraft so all in all I'd have to say FX is a market negative with the Yen looking like it too will move higher with the $USD early on, it's the big move in the Yen higher that the market really needs to worry about.

ES, NQ and TF didn't move much overnight, they all saw at least one small positive divergence intraday at 7 a.m., it seems the NASDAQ futures have made the most of it. On the bigger picture 5 min chart, all 3  are in leading negative territory, but have smaller relative positive divergences in them, that's like saying you're in the middle on a 5 day pullback with a two day bounce coming (don't quote me on time, just trying to give some idea of the power of the signals).

There may be a chance to run a couple of quick short plays in Gold, Silver and Crude, we need them to see some early strength and confirm the longer term weakness continues to build.

Other than that, all is pretty quiet thus far.