5 things to start your day

[Bloomberg]( Trump and Putin's Finnish meeting, Blankfein's time running out, and China's challenges. Finland summit Donald Trump is meeting Vladimir Putin in [Helsinki, Finland this morning]( with the president under pressure to confront his Kremlin counterpart over [meddling in the 2016 election](. Trump said that he will inevitably be criticized for the gathering, no matter the outcome, tweeting that “much of our news media is indeed the [enemy of the people](.” In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” aired yesterday, he described the [European Union]( as a “foe.” Putin and Trump are expected to hold a post-meeting press conference around 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Banks Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to name company President [David Solomon]( as its next CEO, the New York Times reported Sunday, citing people briefed on the plan. The move would be another step towards the exit for Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO who helped the bank navigate the financial crisis. In Europe, there was some good news for battered Deutsche Bank AG shareholders after the lender said that second-quarter profits had “[considerably](” topped analyst estimates. Shares in the German bank rallied more than 8 percent following the announcement. China clouds The Chinese economy [grew 6.7 percent]( in the second quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace since 2016. While the headline number was in line with expectations, some of the underlying data such as industrial output was weaker than forecast. Continued deleveraging and a slowdown in investment growth, coupled with risks from [a trade war with the U.S.](, mean headwinds facing the world’s second largest economy are building. This is feeding through to wider worries about the prospects for [global expansion](. Markets mixed Overnight, the MSCI Asia Pacific excluding Japan Index fell 0.3 percent, with the Shanghai Composite index closing 0.6 percent lower. Japan was closed for a holiday. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was 0.1 percent lower at 6:30 a.m. with the financial sector, led by Deutsche Bank, a stand-out winner. S&P 500 futures pointed to [an unchanged open](, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 2.834 percent and gold was little changed. Coming up… At 8:30 a.m. today U.S. retail sales data for June are released, with economists expecting a drop to 0.5 percent from the previous month’s 0.8 percent growth. At the same time, the New York Fed's Empire manufacturing gauge for July is published. The International Monetary Fund is due to announce its latest World Economic Outlook update today. In earnings, Bank of America Corp., Blackrock Inc. and Netflix Inc. are all due to report. What we've been reading This is what's caught our eye over the weekend. - Odd Lots: How to listen to what the market is [trying to tell you](. - Powell to cross [political minefield]( as trade war clouds outlook. - U.S. firms [still upbeat]( amid crosswinds from trade war, tax cuts.  - French World Cup victory is good for morale, [marginal for the economy](. - [America’s values]( must guide White House diplomacy. - The British are building a [spaceport](. - Source of [cosmic rays]( discovered. And finally, here’s what Joe's interested in this morning If you've followed this space for awhile, you know that one of my favorite charts in the world is the ratio of the S&P 500 to gold. Why? Because I think it's the perfect measure of human optimism. Stocks represent collective human endeavors. Gold is, well, just a shiny metal. So if people are piling into it and avoiding equities, it means they have more confidence in a do-nothing commodity than human enterprise. Not surprisingly, the recent peak of this ratio was in early 2000 when the world was wildly optimistic about everything. The bottom was in 2011, when we had passed the acute stage of the crisis, but it still looked as though the global economy might be permanently ruined. Well, even with all that's going on in the world, we've hit a new post-crisis high in the ratio. This is a combination of gold wilting while the S&P bumps up against the end of a multi-month range. Speaking of bullion, it's obviously a rough time for believers. Geopolitics risks haven't helped. Nor have concerns about inflation. The one pro-gold "story" of the last 10 years that had some resonance was that yellow metal did well when real interest rates were held extremely low. But that story has faded as well. 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