By Deepta Bolaky
 @DeeptaGOMarkets

Equity Markets

Wall Street was buoyed by the optimism of de-escalating the US-China trade war. Global stocks rallied on President Trump tweet last night.

Major US equity benchmarks ended in the positive territory with modest gains:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P500 recovered strongly and added 0.97% and 1.35% respectively.
• The Nasdaq Composite rose by 1.39%.

Currency Markets

In the forex markets, major currencies were mixed against the US dollar. The main dominant themes were the upbeat comment on trade and ECB speech.

Source: Bloomberg Terminal

The Euro tumbled and emerged as the worst performer of the majors. The weak CPI figures started the slide for the shared currency. ECB’s President Draghi Speech added further bearish pressure on the Euro.

“In the absence of improvement, such that the sustained return of inflation to our aim is threatened, additional stimulus will be required.”

EURUSD dropped to 1.1181 from a high of 1.1242 after the EZ data and the speech.

The Antipodeans rallied on trade optimism. The Aussie dollar rebounded to 68.80 US cents while the New Zealand dollar is trading at 65.34 US cents.

Commodities Market

It was all positive for the oil markets yesterday:

• Trade news was optimistic.
• Comments from Saudi Arabia that they are confident that OPEC and Non-OPEC allies will agree to production cut supported oil prices.
• API Weekly Crude Oil Stock fell from 4.85M to -0.82M in June 14.

Oil prices bolstered higher – WTI traded above $54 mark while the Brent Crude reached a high of $62 before retreating slightly to $61.64. 

UKOUSD and USOUSD (Daily Chart)

Source: GO MT4

Gold had a volatile trading session – it pumped up to $1,350 but once again failed to hold ground and dropped back to $1,345. XAUUSD appeared unperturbed by the improvement in risk sentiment.

XAUUSD (Daily Chart)

Source: Bloomberg Terminal

Cryptocurrencies

Crypto market is cheering up Facebook’s move in launching a digital asset to be used as a peer-to-peer payment with messenger apps.

However, when the social media giant unveiled its Libra cryptocurrency project, Bitcoin failed to bid higher. The bellwether of cryptocurrency could face more downside pressure of Libra is seen as more stable, cheaper and easier as a medium of exchange compared to Bitcoin.

BTCUSD (Hourly Chart)

Source: Bloomberg Terminal

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