European and Asian market and S&P futures have resumed their slide, as geopolitical tensions between North Korea and the U. S. spiked again overnight after Pyongyang responded to the latest set of warnings by Trump, revealing a plan to fire 4 ballistic missiles at Guam by mid-August. Gold gains for a third day while Brent rose above $53.
Following de-escalation attempts by Rex Tillerson, and a NYT report that Trump’s “fire and fury” statement had been improvised, markets saw a tentative recovery in risk appetite in overnight U. S. and early Asian trading, but a risk off mood returned again as Asian stocks fell back and London, Frankfurt and Paris dropped 0.5-1.2 percent in Europe, spooked by North Korea’s latest response to Trump, which dismissed as a “load of nonsense” warnings by President Trump that it would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the United States and in which a general outlined a detailed plan on state TV to fire four Hwasong-12 ICBM at Guam by mid-August, sending virtually every Asian market lower. “Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him” North Korea said of its diplomacy with Trump.
Asia took the brunt of tonight’s selloff, with Japan’s Topix index ended less than 0.1 percent lower, while South Korea’s Kospi index slid 0.4 percent, adding to a 1.1 percent drop on Wednesday. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong fell 1.1 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index lost 0.1 percent. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.5 percent. The won dropped to a four-week low and was trading 0.6 percent down, while the Japanese yen rose 0.2 percent to 109.80 per dollar, the strongest in eight weeks.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 10, 2017.
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