A.M. Update

Asia has been weaker overnight than Europe or US futures, the Shanghai Composite dropped -2.44% back under 2,000 following news that China's Finance Ministry has told central government agencies to cut expenditures by 5% this year. There was also a 1.4% drop in the Nikkie 225.

Spiegel ran a piece over the weekend about the latest ECB meeting that left rates unchanged, however according to Spiegel,  both the ECB's Chief Economist and Peter Praet and Mario Draghi wanted a 25 bp cut, but were out-voted by seven other members from "the Northern countries" one of which was Germany, clearly the most influential and with an election coming up for Merkel and a rate cut not being in her electoral interests, its not surprising. Whether this is cause for about a 10 ES point move since the close on Friday as well as European peripheral countries debt spreads lower or not is unknowable, but probable. All of the gains came last night starting an hour before the European open, as a matter of fact, at that point ES futures were nearly dead even with Friday's, meaning they had lost some ground overnight since my post. This is also very much in line with what I said last night in "The Week Ahead" about how the 1 min 3C charts ended on Friday and how they usually pick up the next trading day right where they left off.

Also likely helping risk is a political deal to give Portugal's leader of the  CDS party the position of Vice Premier which has for now, kept the coalition government together, you may recall last week it was on the verge of collapse, threatening to undo all of the "Austerity" moves the country has made to the Troika's delight.

Also Greece's Fin. Min. said they expect to reach a deal with International Creditors before today's EuroGroup meeting, which was also a large spot of tension last week.

Today is pretty light on the Economic docket, but Alcoa kicks off earnings season after the close.

ES and NQ futures (1 min) are in line, TF/R2K futures are leading negative- 1 min. We typically see about 3 different trends or areas where trends can emerge through the day, morning, mid-afternoon and the closing hour/30 mins so again I wouldn't jump to any conclusions too fast as this is just opening trade for a new week. I'll update other futures of interest in a moment.

TF 1 min futures leading negative