Big Picture Catalysts to Watch Coming Up in the next few weeks – resolution on these issues would remove a major overhang for the market.
· Financial Regulatory Reform – see the broader update.
· European Bank Stress Tests – European bank stress tests - results could be published by mid-Jul - in an attempt to break the market panic that surrounded its banks and debt markets this week, the Bank of Spain said it would conduct "stress tests" of its banks and publish the results to the public. The news took much of Europe by surprise and caused shock - while many other countries have been conducting similar tests on their institutions, no other major nation was prepared to divulge the specific individual results to the public. However, at a European leaders summit on Thurs, the major countries of the EU, inc. Germany, said they would follow in Spain's footsteps and publish the test outcomes (the results are due to start hitting in mid-Jul). Investors will be focused on two critical issues: 1) whether the assumptions underlying the tests are "credible" (i.e. are they