| Good morning. Donald Trump is indicted, Finland nears NATO accession and the UK joins an Indo-Pacific free-trade bloc. Here's what people are talking about. Donald Trump is right about at least one thing: No other former US president has ever been treated like this. Trump faces an unprecedented chain of indignities after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday in a probe of hush money payments to a porn star during his 2016 campaign — a historic event in American law and politics that is certain to divide an already polarized society and electorate. The 45th president, the first former Oval Office occupant to be indicted, will be fingerprinted and have his mug shot taken like any criminal defendant when he comes to New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan to face the charges, court officials have said. Turkey's parliament voted to approve Finland's membership in NATO, removing the final obstacle to the accession of Russia's Nordic neighbor into the defense alliance as its 31st member. Lawmakers in Ankara unanimously voted on Thursday to ratify Finland's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the last of current members to approve the expansion after the Hungarian parliament on Monday also backed the move. The vote seals a major change in the European security architecture after militarily non-aligned Finland and Sweden sought NATO membership in a U-turn following Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year ago. It also highlights divisions inside the bloc as Turkey and Hungary remain opposed to Sweden's entry, with the timeline for the accession of the largest Nordic nation thrown in doubt. The UK will join an 11-nation Indo-Pacific free-trade bloc, becoming the first new member since its creation, in a bid to strengthen economic ties with new partners following divorce from the European Union. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government sees membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes Australia, Japan and Canada, as a boost for economic growth and geopolitical relations. The UK expects growth of £1.8 billion ($2.23 billion) each year over the long-term, a figure that could rise if other countries join the bloc. The UK also believes membership will give it a role in setting regional trade rules over the coming decades. That could mean the UK and other members preventing China's future accession to the bloc in a move to ensure high trade standards. President Joe Biden's administration is pressing regulators to tighten the rules for mid-sized banks, its strongest step yet in response to the banking crisis that led to the failure of a pair of regional lenders. The White House on Thursday called for federal banking agencies, in conjunction with the Treasury Department, to enact a series of changes. None of the measures requires Congressional approval, the White House said in a statement, though it's not clear if regulators will enact them. The package bears the fingerprints of one of Biden's new top aides, former Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard, who has long warned that she thought that deregulation legislation passed in 2018 went too far. Brainard took over Biden's National Economic Council last month. European stocks faced an updraft from a rally in US and Asian shares. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde speaks in Florence, while Ignazio Visco, Governor of the Bank of Italy, will speak in Rome. Data set for release include Eurozone inflation and UK GDP. Computacenter, InPost, Jungheinrich and Nordex are among the companies on the earnings docket. This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours Many investors like stories. There's a whole industry built up around what's called narrative investment. Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller even wrote a book about such things. The 1990s saw retail and professional investors enthused by the narrative that the internet was going to revolutionize our lives and create billionaires in the process. And while this has proven true, not all the story-stocks of the day were equally successful. And as the shine went from the Dot-Com era, China brought a new exciting investment case. In recent years, many themes have emerged. We've had the pandemic trade, sure. The reopening trade. The rise of Gen Z. Robotics. AI. Bitcoin. Vegetarian meat. Psychedelics. ESG. But perhaps exactly because there are so many competing stories, so many yarns to choose from, none have really achieved dominance or a sustainable critical mass. Peyton Forte over on the cross-asset team shared a chart based on Bloomberg Intelligence data that backs up this assertion. She shows that US thematic ETF flows have been negative for nine straight months. Now, we can speculate about what's behind the trend, but to me, it would be interesting to know what the lack of faith in the future says about existing and coming economic conditions. If people aren't as excited about tomorrow as they were yesterday, that feels like a pretty bearish sign, right? But it might also just be a reflection of recent market volatility. When stocks draw down, it makes sense to close out the most speculative positions first. I don't know that we can see from the data which is more likely to be correct. But this is a flow I'll be tracking closely in the future. This commentary first ran on Markets Live on the Bloomberg Terminal, where Eddie van der Walt is Deputy Managing Editor based in London. Follow him on Twitter at @EdVanDerWalt | 
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