Log in to today’s North American session Market wrap for September 30
Today continue yesterday’s geopolitical narratives with the US Government shutdown odds increasing (it seems that democrats wouldn’t want to sign an extension) and Arab nations pushing for Hamas to accept the Gaza deal.
About the first theme, a movement is happening with the Trump administration to remove a huge number of federal workers in an attempt to reduce costs and bureaucratic inefficiencies – There is a breach in the Government budget.
The one issue is that it would be the people whose jobs are on the line that are required to prevent a shutdown. There are some intricacies to this theme but overall, markets should be more concerned about a delayed NFP release and Jobless claims, with the Labor Statistics office affected.
This dragged the USD lower for a second straight day, however, FX movements are still far from clear and decisive – It will be very interesting to see how markets will interpret a delay of such quintessential releases.
Not too good for the US reputation in any case.
Some other, more positive developments are happening in the Middle East however, with a long-list of nations pressing for the signature of the peace proposal which would be a great advance in the region.
This would give back some credibility to the US and potentially countering the negative effects of a shutdown.
In any case, month-end flows came and they were pretty erratic – Between 15:00 and 16:00 ET, equities rallied but got rejected harshly right before the close.
The S&P 500 attained the 6,700 but couldn’t close above while the Nasdaq and Dow were more muted.
Gold is finishing the month at its highs.
What a rally in the precious metal +11.20% on the month, posting its best performance since August 2011 amid all the concerns for the US dollar and much else.