Last Day of the Month and Quarter as well as Window Dressing

Apparently all that millisecond action driving stock prices higher within a short period of time late Friday afternoon as shown by NANEX, were Russell 2000 stocks being added or deleted from the index, I don't quite understand howe this worked, but someone front ran the front runners, in any case, they were all R2K additions or deletions. Interesting market.

This is also a very busy eco-data week and shortened trading week, the NASDAQ and NYSE both close at 1 p.m. on Thursday forcing data like Non-Farm Payrolls to be released Thursday. Friday all markets are closed due to the 4th of July, it should be interesting.

We also have the ECB meeting on Thursday.

It was a light news flow over the weekend except  Baghdadi of the ISIS insurgency declaring a Caliphate and crucifying 9 rebels who were considered, "too moderate", this means he expects all in areas under ISIS control to swear allegiance to him including Al Qaeda. The other news was the Bank for International Settlements, the central banks' bank,  essentially accused world leading central banks of taking the easy way with policy over the last several years which has gained them nothing in the end (a 5- year low in Q1 GDP after nearly 4 trillion in F_E_D balance sheet expansion) and was dumbfounded by the market's disconnect from reality, further adding that balance sheets of Central banks are stretched so thin that they may not even be able to respond to an ordinary recession much less something worse. We are one more negative GDP print away from a recession in the US.

Overnight activity in the Index futures has been relatively flat with Asian equities showing a mostly positive bias.

Crude has lost more since the open of futures for the new week, strange considering the escalation of the new Caliphate declared by  Baghdadi. Gold also seems to be pulling back a bit as expected as well as silver.