Morning all,

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, Spain rears its ugly head again. It was all going so well last week with some solid gains. That’s not to say that those gains will evaporate but investors will take stock of where we are now. The Spain bonds roared through 7% faster than you can say Bradley Wiggins, and this was enough to spook the market once again. News that Valencia was asking for a bailout will escalate with more Spanish regions joining the party in the coming days. This was all enough to spook equity markets again and the Dow finished down 120.

Our market may return to recent form with a backwards bias!4200 on the ASX 200 may be the top at the moment…

Things to make me go all Tour de France!

1.Wiggins wins the first ever Tour de France for Great Britain, Cadel comes 7th, which is still pretty good over a three-week race.

2.Adam Scott does a great impersonation of Greg Norman at the British Open!

3.Spain had its own Black Friday Event as bond markets went into meltdown. They are now pretty much locked out of funding markets and will run out of money in 40 days! This makes Greece look like a picnic!Which will run out of money at teh end of July!!!!Happy days!

4.Calls from Unions for General Strikes in the Spanish autumn. Panic is now beginning!

5.Heading into the Australian reporting season. Not expecting great things and the focus will be on the outlook. Expect caution, headwinds tough decisions etc!

6.Rupert Murdoch resigns from UK boards..prelude to the split or a huge ‘Mea Culpa’!

7.Chinese Central Bank official suggests growth may slow to 7.4% in this quarter, which is not what they want. Suggests bottom has not been reached.

8.Germany’s Vice-Chancellor ‘s “more than skeptical” view that Greece can fulfill its obligations; after which “there can be no further payments”

9.LIEBOR arrests imminent after Barclays dobs in their mates..they will not be popular!!

10.In Aussie economic news, consumer price data for the June quarter is due to be released on Wednesday. A Bloomberg survey of economists forecasts prices rose by 0.6 per cent in the three months to the end of June, up from a gain of 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2012.

11.In the US,the official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several economists predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965…that cannot be a good thing! Drought isn’t going to help either with food set to soar!

So expect to see our market lose its fizz today with the resource stocks under a little pressure. The big move last week of selling banks to buy BHP,RIO and WPL may be a little premature and I still favour safety at the moment..TLS, Banks and other high yielders the place to be as interest rates will continue to trend lower. May be a disappointing week this week..back to low volumes and drifting lower perhaps…

And finally….

“So I went down my local ice-cream shop, and said ‘I want to buy 
an ice-cream’. He said Hundreds & thousands?’ I said ‘We’ll start
 with one.’ He said ‘Knickerbocker glory?’ I said ‘I do get a certain
 amount of freedom in these trousers, yes.’

Sorry it’s Monday, so excuse the Tommy Cooper joke!

Clarence

xxxx

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