In a relatively quiet day for economic calendar news, the geo political tensions in relation to North Korea, once again dominated the mainstream media’s commentary and as a consequence the investor narrative throughout Monday’s trading sessions. The financial media also focused on the rogue regime’s latest (alleged) hydrogen bomb test, which caused a significant earthquake […]
Friday witnessed a shock NFP (Non Farm Payroll) result published by the BLS department in the USA; forecast at 180k jobs created in August, versus 189k in July, the actual number came in at 156k. Added to the spike in corporate job cuts – as evidenced by the recent Challenger corporate job cut numbers –
China posted encouraging economic calendar data on Thursday morning; their manufacturing PMI came in at 51.7, marginally beating the forecast of a drop to 51.3, from the 51.4 reading posted for July. Whilst only moderately above the 50 figure, which divides contraction from expansion, the figure delivered optimism that the Chinese economy has not discovered
Despite the tropical storm Harvey making landfall for the second time in as many days and the clean up cost now being calculated at $200b by some estimators, the USA economy was delivered some good news on Wednesday, in the form of the GDP data coming in at 3% annualised for Q2, ahead of the
As the USA presidential administration battled with the chaos in Houston and Louisiana, caused by tropical storm Harvey, the North Korean presidential administration appeared to take advantage of the USA’s attention drift, by firing long range missiles over Japanese air space. Despite the projectiles dropping harmlessly into Japan’s territorial waters, the fact that the potential
As the tropical storm named Harvey continued to batter the USA’s fourth biggest city of Houston, investors and analysts began to survey where the damage, in terms of the financial cost, would hit hardest. Insurance companies’ valuations were naturally heavily hit on the SPX and DJIA index, as the initial cost of the catastrophe is
At the Jackson Hole meeting on Friday, the leaders of both The Fed and the ECB issued very different proclamations with regards to their central banks’ current positions and future guidance, which caused their respective currencies to move in polar opposite directions. Despite a previous and thinly veiled commitment to begin “unwinding” the Fed’s $4.5
The U.K. stats agency the ONS, delivered data which concerned both investors and analysts during Thursday’s trading sessions; GDP Q2 growth came in as expected at 0.3%, keeping annual growth on target for 1.7%. However, based on the current trajectory, many analysts fear the U.K. will struggle to deliver growth over 1% in 2017, many
USA equities fell for the first time in three days as a consequence of Trump’s threat to shut down the USA govt if he doesn’t get funding to build his infamous “Mexico wall”. A domino effect then took shape, as analysts and investors quickly moved on to doubt his capacity to deal with the looming
Markets often rise before a scheduled meeting of the most powerful global banking individuals takes place. The G7 or G30 meetings and the world trade forums, often instil a sense of confidence in investors, a rational belief that the key movers and shakers have everything under control and that projection of competence goes a long
