“Should I stay or should I go now?” sang the Clash as did Egyptian Pres Mubarak. For now he wants to stay another 7 months and the threat that brings to any growing sense of stability is what’s bothering markets this morning but throughout this whole process over the past few weeks, the market has cared on exactly one day, exactly two weeks ago. The S&P futures are just back to where they were at 10am yesterday, Brent crude is below yesterday morning’s high and gold is down. Egyptian 5 yr CDS is up about 42bps to 380 after getting as high as 430 two weeks ago. South Korea unexpectedly did not raise interest rates just a few weeks after South Korean Pres declared a “war against inflation.” The central bank forgot to fight even after their PPI figure rose 6.2% y/o/y, the most since Nov ’08. The Kospi did close at a 9 week low as did Taiwan and Singapore fell to a 5 month low but other Asian markets bounced.
