The United States is of course closed today because of Independence Day that commemorates when on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as a new nation, the United States of America, and that they were no longer part of the British Empire.

In some way, we could call it the historical first “Brexit.”

When we look at it from this angle we could say that this first historical Brexit does offer some hope for the European Union that it is possible to have a life after leaving the United Kingdom. If the United States managed to do it, then surely the European Union will manage to struggle on as well.

In the somewhat subdued day ahead, from the Euro area we got producer price inflation that fell in June by 0.4 percent from May, after showing no growth in April and missing market expectations of a 0.2 percent drop. It was the sharpest decline in producer prices so far, this year, but nevertheless remained above the December 2016 level.

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This is worth for taking a look at. As most companies sell to other companies rather than to consumers, producer price inflation is also free of the complex issues of assessing things like consumer housing costs and other some re-complications.

As such, this represents one of the better guides to corporate pricing power in any economy, all be it only corporate pricing power in the domestic market.

Many listed Euro area companies also being exporters with separate price indicators for that aspect of their sales.

Along with evidence of corporate pricing power, we could have evidence of what policy makers might do about it, or sort of.

The European Central Bank (ECB) Executive Board member Mr. Praet will participate today in a panel discussion at “The Fixed Income Market Colloquium” in Rome, Italy.

He is someone who is known to favor “lower for longer” or possibly “lower indefinitely” when it comes to policy.

Nonetheless, with European Central Bank President Draghi admitting an addiction to easing and promising to try and kick the habit, it is possible that the tone of even a dovish speaker like Praet made change with the changing circumstances. We’ll see.

Investors will hopefully be being able to start slowly, very slowly building a pattern of where individual members of the ECB are positioning themselves on the central bank’s policy outlook.

This is important for investors for getting somewhat of an idea of where the divergence between the interest rates of the Fed and the ECB could be headed for because that divergence will have its impact of the euro/dollar exchange rate.

In my opinion, and as it looks like it is now pretty sure the Fed is clearly set to continue on its tightening cycle, which is not the case with the ECB, at least not so far.

I still can’t see a substantial stronger euro against the dollar over the short to median term because of the simple fact that interest rates in the U.S. are bound to go higher, which is not the case in the Euro area.

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Today, there is also a certain amount of geopolitics around with North Korea dropping successfully in Japanese territorial waters an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is a guided ballistic missile with a minimum range of 3,400 miles or 5,500 kilometers that is primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery, but, of course, conventional, chemical, and biological weapons can also be delivered.

This comes in the wake of President Trump calling Asian leaders to see if anyone had any idea about what to do about the regime in Pyongyang.

President XI of China is over in Europe ahead of the G-20 gathering to spend taxpayers’ money with no apparent advantage, which will be happening in the German port city of Hamburg at the end of the week.

Minor distractions for the markets include an apparent computer/human error repricing stocks on the NY Nasdaq at $123.43. Rather amusingly this meant, briefly of course, for Amazon an 87 percent decline and for example for Zynga a 3,292 percent rise, which made the games group worth more than Goldman Sachs.

There was also Fed Chair Yellen being hospitalized over the weekend in London, a visit that on average at least, would have cost one third of the price of the equivalent treatment in the United States.

Yes, this could be seen (in some way of course) as the cost of independence…

Etienne "Hans" Parisis is a bank economist who has advised global billionaires and governments on the financial markets and international investments.