Geopolitical issues, earnings, and, of course, Trump comments are in focus on this last trading day of the week. And so far at least, it looks like stock futures are pointing to another “sloppy” open at the corner of Broad and Wall.

On the geopolitical front, it looks to me like the combination of North Korea, Syria, and Russia has become enough for some traders to move toward a risk-off position. The latest is word that North Korea will conduct a nuclear test (its sixth) as early as Saturday and that the rogue nation has missiles that can carry sarin gas. Awesome.

On the Russian front, the country has vetoed a United Nations resolution to condemn the alleged chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Assad. Recall that Russia has supported Assad militarily and continues to deem the U.S. response as unjustified. Ugh.

Next, in case you missed it, it appears that Trump is trying to “jawbone” the dollar lower as the President told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the greenback is too high.

In response, we are seeing the typical “risk off” trades gaining traction here with gold moving to a 5-month high, the dollar dropping, and the yield on the 10-year falling to 2.296, the lowest level seen since November 2016.

Turning to earnings, the quarterly parade of corporate reports is starting to move into high gear as we’ve got results from JPMorgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citi (C) this morning. For those that are interested in the closely watched JPM earnings, Jamie Dimon’s bank beat the Street’s estimates on both the top and bottom lines. EPS came in at $1.65 versus $1.52 and revenue were reported at $25.586 billion versus $24.877.

As for Dimon’s economic outlook, the JPM CEO said in a statement, “U.S. consumers and businesses are healthy overall and with pro-growth initiatives and improving collaboration between government and business, the U.S. economy can continue to improve.”

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