Market Update – 5th December 2018 – US Equities Get Slammed As Trump Calls Himself The Tariff Man””

Despite a considerable sell off of U.S equities overnight, the AUD has managed to hold ground versus the majors while commodity prices edged higher. The Nasdaq was the biggest loser, down 3.8% followed by the S&P500 and Dow which lost around 3%; Europe fared better only losing around half to one percent. Aussie equities are expected to have a poor opening with Futures suggesting a loss of around 1.5% – this could drag the Aussie lower through the day.

Aussie GDP figures are out at 11.30am. GDP is anticipated to have grown by 0.6% for the latest quarter which would suggest GDP on an annual basis is running at around 3.2%; this would be marginally below the 3.4% figure we saw for the end of the June quarter. Household spending was what drove the previous quarters headline figure to its highest point since 2012, so it’ll be very interesting to see if we can keep up that pace despite the negative rhetoric about housing prices, weak retail, trade wars, etc. Goes without saying that a surprise to the upside here will see AUD move higher, while a particularly poor number will see AUD fall.

*Side note – Trump called himself “The Tariff Man” this morning in a tweet….no surprises that U.S equities got hammered. I’m starting to think that Donald Trump might have an IG Markets trading account and is trading equities on margin and moving the market with his tweets……….I’ll leave that for Robert Mueller.

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7312

AUD/GBP – 0.5743

AUD/EUR – 0.6433

AUD/NZD – 1.0556

AUD/JPY – 82.457

USD/BTC – $3,847

OTHER MARKETS:

All Ords (XAO) – 5,797

Gold – A$1,686/oz

Silver –  A$19.78/oz

WTI – US$52.98/barrel

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

AUD – GDP q/q at 11.30am

EUR – ECB President Draghi Speaks at 7.30pm