Scott Hoffman writes about the futures and commodity markets

By issuing their ratings cuts on Friday afternoon S&P managed to prevent the type of violent reaction that could have occurred if done around normal trading hours.  Europe still has problems – the Greek bailout talks are thorny (to say the least) and much of the EU and the EFSF are still on negative credit [...]

Overnight ECB Council member Liikanen said that “there’s a risk” that economic conditions in the Euro-Zone will continue to worsen. This renewed pressure on the Euro which had been temporarily placated by Spanish and Italian debt successes and friendly comments from Draghi.  Italy sold more debt today and got a more tepid response.  The US [...]

Fitch retraced their steps overnight. After yesterday’s comment that they were unlikely to lower France’s sovereign rating, their head of sovereign ratings, David Riley, said the ECB should boost bond purchases to support Italy and prevent a “cataclysmic” collapse of the euro.  Cataclysmic is not a word to be tossed around lightly.  Germany reported that [...]

Chinese and Indian stock markets were up strongly last night. A Chinese government report on trade showed strong commodity imports in December, reflecting robust economic growth. At the same time, import growth was slow enough that traders are discussing monetary easing by Beijing.  Alcoa kicked off earnings season with some friendly news as they forecast [...]