Market Update – 3rd August 2018 – AUD/EUR and AUD/USD Stuck In A Tight Range, While Markets More Broadly Remain Volatile

I’ve been off the past few days as a result of the common cold, but back into the swing of things today with a morning market update. Markets over the past two days have been anything but stable with equities, commodities and the Aussie all whipsawing back and forth amid fears we’re in for a further escalation in the Trump/China trade war. Trump has more recently been threatening to place tariffs as high as 25% on ALL Chinese imports, which is just plain ridiculous but knowing Trump it’s unlikely to come to fruition and is more likely simply a ‘negotiation’ tool to bring China to the trade talks table.

European stocks fell overnight, while in the U.S the NASDAQ and S&P finished higher thanks to some bullish momentum as a result of Apple shares which surged around 3% and took the company past a market cap valuation of US$1 trillion dollars, that’s 12 zero’s… In other markets commodities finished the overnight session mixed with Copper flat, Zinc up marginally and all important Iron ore up around 1%. The Aussie dollar didn’t follow Iron Ore higher but is holding in a trading range between 0.73 and 0.74. AUD/EUR has been trending ever slightly higher since around the middle of July but does also appear to be stuck in a very tight range between 0.6290 and 0.6350.

Ahead today is local retail sales at 11.30am and then U.S Non-Farm payrolls at 10.30pm AEST this evening. Retail sales are tipped to come in around 0.3% while U.S economy is expected to have added around 200K new jobs in the latest month. Have a fantastic weekend.

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7344

AUD/GBP – 0.5634

AUD/EUR – 0.6333

AUD/NZD – 1.0903

AUD/JPY – 82.000

USD/BTC – $7,511

OTHER MARKETS: 

All Ords (XAO) – 6,327

Gold – A$1,642/oz

Silver –  A$20.81/oz

WTI – US$68.39/barrel

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

AUD – Retail Sales at 11.30am

USD – Non-Farm Employment Change at 10.30pm

USD – Average Hourly Earnings m/m at 10.30pm