The gold price is subdued ahead of the European market open
Singapore (Oct 15) Precious metals are slightly subdued this morning gold (-0.10%) is very close to where it started in the Asian session and traded a touch under the $1900 level. Silver is slightly worse off dropping 0.37% but still looks sideways with the $24 support level holding.
Overnight the major piece of data came from Australia if the form of their latest employment Change for September. The reading came in at -29.5K beating the analyst consensus of -35.0K. That was not all the news out of Australia as the RBA governor indicated that there could be more rate cuts to come in the future. This sent AUD tumbling to become one of the worst-performing currencies overnight. The US dollar is broadly flat against most of its other major counterparts.
Equities markets remained subdued during the Asian session, with the exception of the ASX (+0.50%) due to the aforementioned monetary easing story. The Nikkei 225 (-0.52%), Shanghai Comp. (-0.23%) and Hang Seng (-1.42%) all struggled after a negative hand over from the US. According to the US Treasury website, there have been sanctions placed against the ruler of Hong Kong Carrie Lam. This would certainly cause some risk-off sentiment in Hong Kong. Adding to this a US battleship crossed into Taiwanese waters and the US said that the Chinese will defiantly defend their territorial integrity.
On the stimulus front, the saga continues with US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin saying the Republicans and Democrats are still far apart on a deal. The Republicans are not giving up as it has been said that US President Trump has told Mnuchin not to give up until a deal is done. It looking less and less likely a deal will get done before the 4th November election.
Looking ahead, the main data highlights are: US initial jobless claims, Philly Fed manufacturing data and US export and import prices. On the speaker slate, we are due to hear from ECB's Lagarde, Fed's Kaplan, Kashkari, Quarles and BoE's Cunliffe. Major earnings come from Rio Tinto, Morgan Stanley and Taiwan Semiconductor.
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