A.M. Update

Good morning.

There's a lot of talk of a bubble in China and a near bear market as The Shanghai Composite was down -7.4% and just shy of -20%, the media's technical amount to call it a bear market. It is a bubble and it's likely not going to end any different than any other bubble, but what will be interesting is how Chinese authorities and regulators deal with it although even that is a distraction of interest.

As for the main event, the Greek deal that must be done before the market open on Monday or before midnight Saturday at the next Eurogroup meeting, depending on who you listen to (Merkel or the EU), word this morning is Greece has been offered a third bailout program worth $15.5 bn which covers Greek debt payments until December, so it looks like the old kick the can routine the EU use to pull with Greece at that previous bailouts.

It's a bit strange as the IMF said they would NOT participate in a 3rd bailout program and lawmakers in Berlin have not been enthused about the idea either. Although there are quite a few details on how it would be funded, it's short on details of what terms the plan contains and considering such an offer (I don't know whether Greece has it in hand or not), it's awfully quiet surrounding this supposed new deal. I'm almost waiting for the denial of any new deal.

It is also said the EU is making plans in case of a Greek Exit. Perhaps if true, this may be why we were seeing new changes in short term EUR/USD charts yesterday, but of course at this point this is all speculation.

As to futures, for the most part we are right around the area of yesterday's close which isn't uncommon for an options expiration Friday to open and pin near Thursday's close. The charts look fairly mellow and as I would expect for a slight gap up in most of the averages.

 ES/SPX futures intraday divergence looks reasonable for price action.

What matters is what the chart looks like at the end of the day.

As for crude, the other mover this morning, it appears as if it may finally break under the $20 threshold, which is way past due as I wrote my patience is wearing thin with that one.

Today should be a normal op-ex max pain pin until 2 pm, but we all know Greek rumors, denials and headlines are likely to shake the market. I can't imagine traders will go in to this weekend carrying much risk, but we'll let the charts tell us that.