Just as the reflation trade appeared to be finding its latest wind, after a modest rise in oil prices over the past 24 hours (now that Andurand has finished liquidating his book) and a halt to the commodity rout in China, Trump threw the markets for a loop again with his firing of James Comey, which has implications on everything from Trump’s tax policy (most likely delayed due to more infighting between, and within, the two parties) to US geopolitics (will Trump launch another attack, this time against N. Korea to deflect from this scandal?)
‘There is no doubt that Trump is dominating proceedings this morning after the sacking of Comey. This is a political story rather than a market story, but yet again it creates uncertainty in the market, which leaves everything the president does with a cloud floating over it,” said James Hughes, chief markets analyst at GKFX in London, quoted by Reuters.
“The Comey news is being treated as a risk-off event, and the headlines were sparking the dollar’s move down,” said Bart Wakabayashi, branch manager for State Street Bank and Trust in Tokyo.
As a result it has been a chaotic, mostly “risk-off” overnight session, in which S&P futures, some Asian markets and European stocks (which yesterday hit the highest level since August 2015) declined on the latest spike in political uncertainty after Trump’s abrupt firing of Comey. The USD weakened vs G-10 peers; in Japan JGBs sold off across the curve after BOJ’s Kuroda acknowledged that QE purchases have become smaller. The USD/JPY fell in response to the latest belligerent North Korean rhetoric in which a North Korean ambassador told SkyNews his country will conduct a 6th nuclear test, the only question is when. In the other Korea, the Kospi opened higher, rising to new records after Moon Jae-in won the South Korean presidential vote, but then erased early gains as the won weakens.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on May 10, 2017.
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