Palm Beach, FL 5/7/12 (StreetBeat) -- Stocks were mostly weak in Asian trade. The Nikkei was among the worst, it fell two and three quarters percent, the Hang Seng was down 2.6% and Australia fell 2.1%; but Shanghai was flat. Stocks are mixed in Europe this morning. The Dax is down 0.5% and Paris is flat, but Athens is down very sharply, about seven percent; the UK is closed for a bank holiday. US stock futures are down about a half percent or so as I write.*The March reading of Australian Retail Sales were up 0.9% month on month, about four time greater an increase than expected.
*Socialist candidate Francois Hollande is now the President of France; he won about 52% of the vote on Sunday, Sarkozy got 48%. “Austerity is not inevitable”, Holland told supporters after the results were in. Germany’s Merkel has invited Hollande to Berlin for a meeting, as soon as possible.
*There is no clear winner in the Greek election. There is not even a clear combination of parties that can be assembled into a ruling coalition. No one party even received as much as twenty percent of the vote. The Pasok party had won 43% in the 2009 vote; they only got 13% of the vote on Sunday. The interim PM Papademos has submitted his resignation and now a few political parties must try to coalesce in time to chop another EU15 billion from their budget in the next few days, despite the fact that the anti-austerity parties were the ones that gained votes on Sunday, while the ones that want to play along with the EU lost support, though still the largest bloc of a splintered political scene.
*The Fed is scheduled to buy Treasuries today that are due to mature between 2/15/36 and 2/15/42; the results of the operation will be announced just after 10:00am CDT.
*The March reading of Consumer Credit is due out at 2:00pm CDT, it is expected to be +$9.65 billion.
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