Forex news for North American trading on September 3, 2020:
- ISM August services index 56.9 vs 57.0 expected
- Markit final August services PMI 55.0 vs 54.7 expected
- US Q2 nonfarm productivity +10.1% vs +7.5% expected
- US Initial jobless claims 881K vs. 950K estimate
- Canada July int'l merchandise trade balance -$2.45B vs -$2.50B expected
- US July trade balance -$63.6B vs -$58.0B expected
- Mnuchin and Pelosi see stopgap funding bill in October
- Fed's Evans: Highly accommodative policy appropriate 'for some time to come'
- Fed's Evans says he would be comfortable with 2.5% inflation in new framework
- Fed's Bostic warns on long virus recovery timeline
- BOE's Bailey: Any launch of central bank cryptocurrency requires careful consideration
- US plans to bring anti-trust case against Google as soon as this month - report
Markets:
- Gold down $12 to $1931
- US 10-year yields down 1.5 bps to 0.633%
- WTI crude oil falls to one-month low at $40.22
- JPY leads, NZD lags
- S&P 500 down 126 points (or 3.5%) to 3455
- Nasdaq down 5.0%
The bears who have been predicting this for months were right, at least for today. That's little consolation being on the wrong side of one of the all-time great bull markets for weeks on end.
What's most-notable is how the FX market and others were seemingly ahead of this move. The dollar reversed late last week and Treasury yields were lower for four days coming into today. The VIX has been marching higher and even crypto sagged ahead of this.
With that, it's notable that the moves in FX weren't especially large. The commodity currencies sagged but nothing on the magnitude of equities. Cable ticked off another 70 pips but on the daily chart it's still a blip. Perhaps most-notable was that a handful of emerging market currencies -- MXN, BLR among them -- were higher today.
The next event is Friday's jobs report and many are noting that Trump hasn't tweeted about it yet. He gets the data around now so I don't think there's any truth to that belief but it's out there. Regardless of the number, I don't think it's a game-changer but it certainly takes on more significance given the ugliness today.
