Markets Are Going Nowhere On Major Day For Europe

European Parliament / FlickrUS futures are higher after yesterday's solid drop, but mostly markets are going nowhere.

Germany is up a bit.

Italy and France are down a bit.

It's a big day for Europe.

Already we've got all of the various PMI (manufacturing) report from April, and they're universally terrible. They might be slightly less worse on the whole than last month, or what was expected, but Germany actually got worse than last month, and that's the region's strongest economy.

The other big event coming up later today is the ECB meeting. There will be a decision at 7:45 ET, and then a press conference at 8:30 AM ET.

The expectation for Europe is that we'll get a rate cut, but as Lorcan Roche Kelly of Trend Macrolytics has argued, if the ECB is going to do anything effective, it needs to open credit channels for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, as the current monetary policy transmission mechanism is busted.

So what Draghi does on that front is the big question.

We'll be covering it all LIVE.