The U.S. dollar traded overall weaker against other major and multiple emerging market currencies at the beginning of the week. While pairs like the USD/ZAR, USD/INR and USD/MXN were moving lower, the USD/RUB pair was almost unchanged, while the USD/TRY pair was still somewhat elevated compared to the levels seen last week.
Equity markets around the world were trading a bit mixed with indices like the US 30 reaching new records, while at the same time many others like the US 500, Germany 40 and France 40 were trading almost unchanged. Interestingly the VIX Volatility Index continued to push higher, despite the S&P 500 index remaining quite stable and not showing for now any sign of a serious retracement.
Precious metals traded clearly higher at the start of the new week with gold prices reaching a new two months high in the spot markets.
On Tuesday again more fundamental data releases can be expected after Monday was a fairly calm day in that regard. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is set to release its Short-Term Energy Outlook and multiple FOMC officials are set to hold speeches that day. Later in the Asian Pacific trading session Chinese inflation data for October will be published.
EUR/USD
With the dollar trading weaker at the start of the week, the EUR/USD pair managed to push above the 1.16-threshold by Tuesday morning. At the same time the euro traded quite mixed against multiple other majors including the JPY, AUD and GBP, while improving against the CHF and CAD.
Trade balance data from Germany, released on Tuesday morning indicated a small increase in trade surplus reaching €13.2 bn. in September, while at the same time the French trade balance deficit widened to €6.78 bn.
Also on Tuesday the results of the German ZEW survey on current conditions and business expectations can be expected.
Bitcoin
The crypto rally continued on Monday, when Bitcoin finally managed to reach a new record above the $68k mark, while Ethereum was also setting new records above $4.8k and the total crypto market cap moved further above three trillion dollars reached earlier. On a rolling seven day basis among the top ten cryptocurrencies sorted by market cap still only Shiba Inu is trading down by around twenty per cent. The initial dog-meme crypto Dogecoin, which actually can still be mined on the other hand managed to recover and traded at least somewhat higher.
Bitcoin holders and miners might especially keenly look forward to the first major upgrade in four years, called ‘Taproot’, which is set to enable better transaction privacy and efficiency as well as add potential to use the blockchain for smart contracts.
WTI Oil
Oil prices continued to recover for the second trading day in a row on Monday, with a similar upside seen in gasoline futures as well. Natural gas CFDs based on December futures on the other hand continued to slide lower. This is saying something about the situation in the U.S. now, while other markets in particular Asia and Europe might face different conditions as the latter is especially exposed to the geopolitically uncertain supply situation from Russia.
As usual on Tuesday the American Petroleum Institute (API) publishes its weekly statistical bulletin, followed by Energy Information Administration (EIA) data on crude oil, gasoline and distillate stockpiles on Wednesday.
US Tech 100
Performance among the major stock market indices was quite mixed on Monday with the US Tech 100 index moving moderately lower and the US 500 trading mostly unchanged, while the US 30 index raced once again towards yet another all-time high.
In the tech sector especially chip stocks (US Semiconductors ETF +1.11%) performed particularly well with AMD (+10.09%) and Nvidia (+3.57%) ending the day among the top 3 components of the NASDAQ Composite Index.
PayPal was trading up in after-hours as the company’s earnings of $1.11 per share (adjusted) topped analysts’ expectations, while revenue was slightly worse than anticipated.
Robinhood was meanwhile trading lower after the company disclosed that hackers gained access to data from seven million customers.
The earnings season continues with companies including Palantir, Momentive, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Coinbase, NIO and Plug Power set to release their quarterly results on Tuesday.
