A.M. Observations

To say quiet overnight would be an understatement except on the streets of the US as Halloween was underway, I hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween. Since when did neighbors start filling and re-filling wine glasses for the parents as the kids grab candy? Anyone else seen that before?

ES/SPX futures overnight are near dead flat, maybe around +/- half a point as I see them.

Overnight China had a slightly impressive official Chinese and Final HSBC Manufacturing PMI read at 51.4 vs consensus of 51.2 and formerly 51.1. I believe this is the highest official read since April of 2012. HSBC for one of those rare times wasn't too far off at 50.9 (well at least it's positive above 50) vs the flash at 50.7 and Sept @ 50.9.

Japanese equities have some choppy waters as Sony takes a -12% hit on a profit downgrade from the company.

The EUR's weakness continues overnight, still pouting over the bad European job and inflation data, but the ROC on the downside has subsided noticeably.

RBS, according to the NYT dealbook split $61bn in bad debt in to an internal "Bad Bank". Wouldn't it be nice to improve your credit by splitting off your bad credit (if you have any) in to a separate credit report, like Credit "S" and "B"?

In fact maybe the EUR/JPY sees some upside today as the Yen went from highs on the week at 1 a.m. EDGT to lows just minutes ago. The pair is more or less flat, but I had some feeling yesterday it would bounce soon.

Today we have our first post F_O_M_C speaker, Bullard in St. Louis on monetary policy so that will be watched closely for any signs of F_E_D transparency.

It is a op-ex day, they typically open where they closed Thursday and we aren't far off, it's the typical op-ex pin so the most amount of contracts or contract value expire worthless, it happens every Friday with weeklies trading and becoming more popular.

Typically I have noticed they tend to wrap up a majority of the contracts between 2 and 3 p.m. and the market starts to take on its own personality. I also have noticed the price action in the final hour or two is usually not that important, but the underlying trade often picks up right where it left off on Monday so we''ll be looking at that.

If it is quiet enough this morning I'm going to try to do a quick run through ,my breadth indicators and see what we have after this past week.

Happy Friday