The new week begins with more late night negotiations in the eurozone for the umpteenth iteration for a Greek fix. Most of the deal choices finance ministers have considered appear unsubstantial like accepting Greek bonds as collateral for aid or lowering interest repayments and etc. But no matter ministers will spin whatever they do as successful. They may even launch more meetings with some bridge loan to buy time.

Meanwhile in the U.S. politicians are digging in for some tough negotiations for the fiscal cliff. Even if there’s a brief trip over the cliff something will be done to “save the day” before we splat. Taxes will go up, perhaps second home deductions will disappear and some token cuts (mostly to defense) will appear.

In Japan there’s a spirited battle taking place about Bank of Japan policies regarding easing policies including QE. To quell the dispute the current head asserted easing alone won’t solve the problems facing the economy.

And in more debt related news Argentina continues to saying no to honoring its debts. This is an easy sell to the populace in many South American countries.

Taken together these should remind everyone the debt pickle the world is in.

Lastly from overseas the Bank of England announced a successor to Merwyn King by naming former, wait for it…Goldman Sachs honcho Mark Carney as its new head. Carney at one point during his tenure with GS was advising Russia on its debt situation during its financial crisis while at the same time the company was shorting Russian debt. So I guess he’s qualified to deal with sovereign debt issues as GS starts to take over most of Europe and other central banks.

The post mortem (beyond those shoppers getting maimed, maced or killed) on Black Friday shopping remains mixed. Some believe the week’s total sales overall were very good when including Thursday and online sales.

Economic data in the U.S. showed a shockingly poor Dallas Fed Survey (-2.8 vs 4.7 expected & prior 1.8) meaning economic growth was in decline. And the Fed is busy with bond buying QE now which you can view here.

In hedge fund follies, Mathew Martoma is either going to jail or will make a deal with authorities to give up a higher up at SAC for his record insider trading activities. That could get very interesting.

The dollar (UUP) was flat while gold (GLD) also did little. Bonds (IEF) and (TLT) recovered from the previous week’s losses. Commodities (DBC) were modestly lower taken down mostly by energy and oil (USO) while base metals (JJC) were unchanged. Stocks were led higher by tech (XLK) while retail (XRT) and (XLY) were weaker.

Volume didn’t improve significantly after the ridiculously light affair from the holiday week. Breadth per the WSJ was mixed.

Follow us on Twitter and join the conversation on Facebook

Premium members to the ETF Digest receive added signals when markets become extended such as DeMark triggers (as seen below) to exit overbought/oversold conditions.

Among other issues the ETF Digest maintains positions in: MDY, IWM, QQQQ, UDN, GLD, DBC, DBB, DBA, USL, EFA, EEM, EWZ and FXI.

The charts and comments are only the author’s view of market activity and aren’t recommendations to buy or sell any security. Market sectors and related ETFs are selected based on his opinion as to their importance in providing the viewer a comprehensive summary of market conditions for the featured period. Chart annotations aren’t predictive of any future market action rather they only demonstrate the author’s opinion as to a range of possibilities going forward. More detailed information, including actionable alerts, are available to subscribers at www.etfdigest.com.