I often say you can't appreciate one market without taking into consideration the backdrop of impacts and effects of other markets. No better illustration of that than last week's action. Here are some indicia:

Thus, Tel Aviv 25 broke 1000 and VIX broke 30, both for the first times since Mar 16, a nice four month anniversary.

Oil had its greatest one week drop in history, down $16 from from $145 to $129. Its previous record decline was $9.60 in the week ending Nov 30, 2007.

The S&P had its first up week of the previous seven, after spending the longest time in the last 25 years without a reasonable X day maximum.

Bunds, down 1.27 points on Friday 7/18, had their second greatest decline in history, exceeded only in Dec 2001. Corn dropped 20%, and most other grains and metals fell at least 10% on the week.

In short, there was a complete changing of the guard, and fulfillment of long frustrated dreams across the board. What other highlights did I miss?

Vince Fulco looks at the foreign policy scene:
Speaking qualitatively, if we change the term "frustrated dreams" to "frustrated pursuits", the extreme hardening of Iranian and Western positions the last few weeks with the then bolt from the blue US actions to meet in Geneva over the weekend and establish some base level of diplomatic representation within the country constitute a promising, albeit fragile reversal of trend.