Stocks Hit as Apple Crumbles
The Nasdaq took another hit yesterday as Apple shares were smashed in the US trading day on news of more curbs in China on the use of iPhones. Apple stocks closed the day down 2.9% contributing to a 0.89% drop for the tech-heavy Nasdaq, the other indices faired slightly better with the S&P down 0.32% on the day and the Dow managed a 0.17% rise. US Treasury yields dropped despite weekly jobs numbers again indicating a resilient market with the benchmark 10-year down 3bps to 4.25%. The dollar continued its grind higher with Euro now trading under 1.0700, the USDJPY hitting another fresh high just under 148.00 again and the USDCNY making a 16 year high.
Traders Looking for a Silver Lining to Market Storm Clouds
The last trading day of the week is starting with sentiment well on the back foot as investor concerns over a number of factors lean on markets. High US yields and the expectation of higher for longer rates in the US is pressing US markets and China’s economic downturn is putting further pressure on the global outlook. So, with the two biggest economies in the world having a negative outlook it is no surprise that risk trades are slipping. However, traders will be looking at data for the silver lining to jump back on the bandwagon that has seen equities drive higher over the several months and key to that could be the Chinese CPI and PPI numbers that are due over the weekend. If we see an upward surprise we expect markets to open higher on Monday morning.
Rangebound Day Ahead for Markets
A week is a long time in financial markets and traders looking at the event calendar today will be anticipating a much quieter time of it than this time last week when the market had been hit with a plethora of US data and they still had the non-Farm Payrolls to negotiate. There is very little of note on the macroeconomic calendar in both the Asian and European sessions today and traders are expecting rangebound trading conditions. It is a similar story once the US markets open as well with just the Canadian employment data due out there, the expectation is for an increase of 18k and for the unemployment rate to tick higher to 5.6%.
