Obama’s speech last night rightly focused on jobs but the policy initiatives discussed were known to the markets already over the past few days so there were no surprises. After falling 11 of 12 days and down 10% on slowing China concerns, Hong Kong bounced 1.6% and the Shanghai index rose for the first day in 5 and it helped to lift the rest of Asia. The rally continued into Europe helped out by a better than expected jobs report in Germany and euro region economic sentiment that was better than expected and rose to the highest since June ’08. Keeping a lid though on the European rally which fell from its early morning highs at about 5ish am was another round of selling in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Irish bonds. Greek 10 yr yield is up another 18 bps to 6.92%, up 84 bps in 5 trading days. Also helping the S&P’s is another round of earnings beats, today from F, CL, PG, MOT, EL, LMT, NOK, CNX, MMM and RTN to name a few.
