joining us today is alan higgins , cio / managing director, coutts & company. let's start with china, and the latest overnight. when you dig into the numbers, what surprised you the most out of this mega data dump out of china? alan: it was a slight miss, i'm not too concerned about that, but encouraged about the retail sales number in china because the bigger picture, we need this move toward consumption in china to rebalance china away from the exports. that was encouraging. on the myths, the revision was strong -- on the miss, the revision was strong. fairly flat markets. the currency was a little bit -- another headline miss may be a concern for some but i think it is fine. the levels are quite extraordinary. annmarie: definitely. massive ace effects coming into play. what does this mean -- massive base effects coming into play. will the ecb continue to support, or will they ratchet back some policy support? alan: we have seen, unlike in the g7, we have seen some tightening in emerging markets. zilkha, notably. -- , -- brazil, notably. it is not like out of