Gold, silver and Bitcoin are all softer leading into the EU open
New York (Jan 11) The US dollar continued to strengthen overnight as the DXY traded 0.28% in the black. This put pressure on gold and leading into the European open the yellow metal traded 0.15% in the red. Silver fared slightly worse trading 1.90% lower. Sentiment in the indices was was weak, the Nikkei 225 was closed due to a public holiday and the ASX (-0.90%) and Shanghai Composite (-1.08%) both closed lower.
US state secretary Mike Pompeo announced that the US will remove all self-imposed restrictions on branch agency interactions with their Taiwanese counterparts. This move is bound to increase tensions with China. Adding to this, the US national security advisor said the US is looking into options to respond to China regarding the virus and issues relating to Hong Kong.
It has not been a weekend of massive market-moving news. Once again politics dominate the headlines as Nancy Pelosi stated the US senate is looking to start impeachment proceedings against the outgoing President Donald Trump this week. He is due to leave the White House on 20th January but it seems US officials cannot wait the nine days till the controversial President leaves.
In terms of economic data, Australian retail sales (MoM) for November improved to hit 7.1% vs analyst expectations at 7.0% and the previous reading of 1.4%. The market also received the latest Chinese CPI figures with the yearly number coming in at 0.2% (exp 0.1%) higher than the previous reading of -0.5%).
Bitcoin had a bit of a wild ride as the digital currency trades at 33.,842. This represents a 19% decline from the high of 41,986 seen four sessions ago.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand was hacked over the weekend too. Governor said, "We are working closely with domestic and international cybersecurity experts and other relevant authorities as part of our investigation and response to this malicious attack".
Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlights include comments from ECB President Lagard, BoE's Tenreyro, Fed's Bostic and Fed's Kaplan.
KitcoNews
