Financial investors are watching the political fallout in Athens after its third aid programme was agreed on Friday nightEnergy minister: Confidence vote unavoidableIntroduction: Merkel tries to calm dissentBild: 120 CDU/CSU MPs could rebelVaroufakis trashes bailout deal 1.51pm BST Best not to pay too much attention to this US data, reckons Rob Carnell at ING (although it being a quiet August day, markets already have of course):The latest Empire manufacturing survey is a good reminder of why we don’t pay much attention to regional activity surveys – to be charitable, they are a bit choppy. In this case, the Empire survey fell from a moderate reading of 3.86, to -14.92. And you have to go right back to 2009 and the heart of the financial crisis to find anything this bad.For what it is worth, and in our opinion, it is not a lot, the new orders and shipments series utterly collapsed this month. Inventories, which had been heading down, fell further, as did the average workweek (in complete contrast to the last labour market report). Interestingly, despite this apparently dismal; backdrop, although the index of employees fell slightly, it remained positive. Odder still, the outlook for six-months’ time improved to 33.64 from 27.04, with new orders and shipments then expected to be strong or picking up. We doubt there is much merit in these expectations either. 1.45pm BST Oh dear. A key survey of the US manufacturing sector has just hit its lowest level since the great recession, and markets aren’t happy.The Empire State index, which tracks factory activity in the New York area, slumped to -14.92, from +4.75 in July. Oof - worst reading for Empire State index since April 2009 http://t.co/VBM4bk8prj pic.twitter.com/hmmmIZYlneBig #DAX selloff pic.twitter.com/ysvWzNjf8U Continue reading...
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