The precious metal Gold is rising with very firm bullish momentum to trade at new record highs close to $3,300.
- One of the standout assets in the market right now is the precious metal Gold, which has risen very persistently in recent hours to reach yet another record high, this time above $3,291 and very close to the round number at $3,300. Interestingly, Gold is rising even though stock markets are mostly dropping, including the US Dollar markets. Trend and momentum traders will want to be long here.
- Stock markets are mostly lower, especially technology stocks, as the Trump administration puts restrictions on NVIDIA's microchip exports to China. NVIDIA's off-hours stock price has not really changed since the announcement, but the index it is a member of, the NASDAQ 100 Index, is lower by 1.87% so far today.
- In the Forex market, since today's Tokyo open, the stronger major currencies are the Swiss Franc and the Euro, while the weakest is the Australian Dollar, so the prevailing sentiment seems a bit unclear as the London session gets underway - probably this is more tariff concerns than simple risk-off. We have also seen a weaker US Dollar today, which is again threatening to test the new 4-year low price it reached last Friday, possibly breaking below key support at 99.27, giving a potential short USD trade setup for longer-term traders. The two major currency pairs, the EUR/USD and the USD/JPY are both in strong long-term trends against the USD.
- President Trump boasted in a social media post that the US is taking in record numbers in tariffs and that prices and inflation are going down. It is true that recent inflation readings in both the USA and Canada were lower than expected, but it will take some time before any tariff-driven inflation shows up in the data.
- Canadian inflation came in lower than expected, unexpectedly falling from an annualized rate of 2.5% to 2.3%, which will further lower expectations of a potential rate cut at the Bank of Canada's policy meeting later today, with markets now expecting the Bank to pass on a cut.
- UK inflation data released earlier today also came in lower than expected, with the annualized rate falling from 2.8% to 2.6%.
- Bitcoin looks as if it may have found support after bouncing up at the recent inflection level at around $83,000.
- There will be a release of US Retail Sales data today.
- Fed Chair Jerome Powell will be speaking publicly later today.
- There will be a release of New Zealand CPI (inflation) data as tomorrow gets underway later.