Headlines:
- Easy come, easy go
- Reminder: US non-farm payrolls for September will be released this week
- ECB's Makhlouf: We are in a good place as far as our monetary policy is concerned
- ECB's de Guindos: I expect inflation to converge towards the 2% target
- BoJ Ueda: Underlying inflation rate remains below target
- Japan prime minister Takaichi to meet with BOJ governor Ueda tomorrow
- Japan growth strategy panel member says BOJ should wait until next year to raise rates
- Simmering tensions continue for China and Japan
- Italy October final CPI +1.2% vs +1.2% y/y prelim
- Euro area economy to grow quicker than estimated in 2025 - EU Commission
Markets:
- GBP leads, AUD lags on the day
- European equities lower; S&P 500 futures up 0.1%
- US 10-year yields down 3.1 bps to 4.117%
- Gold up 0.1% to $4,083.17
- WTI crude oil down 0.2% to $59.98
- Bitcoin up 1.8% to $95,438
It looked like the start of the new week was going to pick up from where we left off on Friday, whereby the risk optimism will come flowing through. Things certainly started off that way as US futures pushed higher, with tech shares leading the charge. But as we slowly got into the session, the positive vibes are starting to give way to more pensive thoughts once again now.
In a week where we will get the September payrolls release, Nvidia's earnings look likely to overshadow everything else in markets. And just ahead of that today, Peter Thiel's hedge fund (Thiel Macro) just said that they sold off their entire stake of Nvidia during the course of Q3. As a reminder, SoftBank also made a similar move here so is there something brewing behind the scenes?
In any case, S&P 500 futures were up as much as 0.6% but have pared gains to be marginally up by 0.1% only now. Nasdaq futures are up 0.2% but that's a far cry from having been up roughly 1% earlier in the session. As US futures retreated, that also pushed European indices lower in a more sluggish start to the week.
In FX, there wasn't too much action with the dollar holding steadier for the most part. EUR/USD nudged a little lower back to 1.1600 while USD/JPY continues to keep just under the 155.00 mark with eyes on Tokyo as Takaichi continues to try and pigeonhole the BOJ into not hiking rates in December. Besides that, there wasn't too much other action of note after we also saw EUR/CHF defending the daily/weekly close of 0.9200 at the end of last week.
In other markets, we are seeing bond yields in the US retreat a little while gold recovers from an earlier dip to $4,050 to steady at $4,083 currently. The battlefield remains muddied in gold after the rise above $4,200 was dashed last week but dip buyers are still seen keeping interested for now at least.
It's still mostly all about the risk mood in trying to see how settled or unsettled investors are feeling, as the clock continues to count down towards next month's Fed meeting as well.
