Header Ads

5 things to start your day

Five Things
Bloomberg

Trump set to announce more Iran sanctions, Turkish assets rally as Erdogan loses vote, and the everything-rally continues. 

What to sanction?

President Donald Trump is threatening Iran with additional sanctions, which may be announced as soon as today. There may be one problem with the plan: There is very little of the Iranian economy left for the U.S. to target. Meanwhile, the cyber-war between the two countries is heating up, with state-backed Iranian hackers stepping up attacks on the U.S., while Trump approved a cyber strike on targets in the Gulf nation. In other sanctions news, the White House added five more China tech companies to a trade blacklist.  

Erdogan loses, lira wins

Turkey's lira advanced as much as 1.8% against the dollar this morning, and the country's stocks rose after the candidate supported by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party was roundly defeated in the re-run of the Istanbul mayoral election. The size of the victory for opposition-party backed Ekrem Imamoglu gave Erdogan little option but to accept the defeat, and then try to change the topic of conversation

Bitcoin, gold, oil

Bitcoin surged as high as $11,251.21 this morning, trading above $11,000 for the first time in 15 months. Some analysts say Facebook Inc.'s Libra is leading to renewed interest in cryptocurrencies, and the current rally may prove more sustainable than Bitcoin's last move higher that saw it peak at over $19,500. Gold, the old-fashioned other currency, is also doing well, holding its gains above $1,400 an ounce today. And there are advances in useful commodities too, with oil following last week's monster 9.4% rally with another rise this morning

Markets wait 

Overnight, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.3% while Japan's Topix index closed 0.1% higher in thin trading ahead of this week's G-20 summit in the country. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was 0.2% lower by 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time in a session that fluctuated between gains and losses. S&P 500 futures pointed to a gain at the open and the 10-year Treasury yield was at 2.031%.

Coming up…

It's a quiet day on the eco data front, with the Chicago Fed national activity index for May at 8:30 a.m. and June Dallas Fed manufacturing activity at 10:30 a.m. SpaceX is due to launch its Falcon Heavy today, with a really, really, really accurate clock among the items in the payload. 

What we've been reading

This is what's caught our eye over the weekend.

And finally, here's what Joe's interested in this morning

The U.S. stock market is hovering near all-time highs, thanks in part to the dovish pivot from the Federal Reserve. While there wasn't actually a rate cut last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell did everything possible during his press conference to suggest that they were ready to ease. There was, however, one tiny line that jumped out at me as not quite fitting in. In response to a question about how far the economy is from full employment, Powell said: "You know, we have to be closer, because more jobs are being created than people are entering the labor force." The implication is that there is still some useful notion of "full employment" that we'll reach one day, and then wages and inflation will start shooting higher. Even after years of underestimating how low unemployment could fall, there hasn't been a real questioning of the notion that the level must exist somewhere. It's not a matter of whether the level exists, but rather where it exists. And as long as that's the view, then the Fed may eventually return to a hawkish posture, even if inflation is mild, simply on the view that the unemployment rate is getting too low. On that note, you should check out the bottom half of this piece from Skanda Amarnath, which argues that rather than seeing full employment as a destination (a specific number), the Fed should perhaps be more concerned with the speed of employment growth as a possible driver of inflation.

Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more.

FOLLOW US Facebook Share Twitter Share SEND TO A FRIEND Share with a friend

No comments