No consensus on Greece

The chase by Michael Kane:

With regard as to whether Greece's new financial plan will be accepted, the commentary on the financial wires this morning is wide-ranging. There is no consensus—and after Greece's plan is officially presented tomorrow, EU leaders will announce what they think on Sunday just before the financial markets re-open for the week. Greece's banks and the Athens stock exchange will remain closed Monday.

Today, European stock markets are up for the second session in a row, suggesting investors are seeing a positive outcome from the Greece negotiations. London, Paris and Frankfurt are up in a range of 0.50% to 1.20% but trading volume is lower than normal.

There's good reason for lower trading volume in London because the subway has been shut down by a one-day strike. The reason they're striking is because the London transit authority wants to have the subway run 24-hours a day and there are a lot of Tube employees who do not want to work the overnight shift. About 3,000,000 people ride the London subway every day. With those trips heading to surface routes today, the congestion is understandable.

And of course, for people who want to ride-share, Uber employs surge-pricing, meaning the price is determined by the supply of rides available versus the demand. The day of the most recent shutdown of the Toronto Transit System due to radio communications problems, $10 Uber rides were costing $50.

Yesterday was a bad day for the NYSE to be hit with a computer glitch. There were indications of problems at the opening bell, but then, two hours into the trading session, the situation became so unstable that administrators took down the trading platform and any trades that were open at the time were cancelled. The timing couldn't have been worse with the markets in China having melted down but with European markets sharply higher. At the end of the day, the Dow Jones, the S&P and the Nasdaq were all down 1.5% to 1.75%. This morning stock index futures are pointing to a sharply higher open on Wall St.

In corporate news: L Brands - which is the parent company of Victoria's Secret and La Senza - is reporting sales for the three months ending July 4th totaled $4,518,000,000 - an increase of 4% over the same period last year. The company operates almost 3,000 stores worldwide and sells through another 650 non-company locations.

The health monitor wristband pioneer Fitbit is again being sued by rival Jawbone. This time Jawbone is trying to prevent Fitbit from importing fitness tracking devices or their parts. In individual lawsuits filed back in May and June, Jawbone claimed that Fitbit stole trade secrets by hiring away employees who allegedly took confidential information, and infringed on several patents.

Fitbit listed shares on the stock market earlier this year and they have doubled, giving the company a market value of $8.6-billion.