Hello, all, and happy Labour day to fellow Canadians and Americans. The American and Canadian markets are closed for today but the rest of the world continues to move.
The UK and the EU meet will again this week, hoping to finalize Brexit negotiations. However, both sides remain in fierce argument at the bargaining table and as a result, the UK may be forced to leave without a deal. British PM Boris Johnson has set his eyes on an Oct. 15 deadline, and if both sides are still at a pass by then, Johnson remarked “we must accept and move on”. The major conflict points continue to be over fisheries and state aid.
In the Asia-Pacific realm, Australia slipped into its first recession in over 30 years after seeing its GDP fall by 6% last week (falling two consecutive quarters), ending a record run of 28 consecutive years of positive growth.
In Japan, prime minister Shinzo Abe continues to be afflicted by Ulcerative Colitis, a chronic inflammatory disease which attacks the GI tract. Abe resigned last week due to his current difficulty with the disease, amid a slumping economy. The coincident index of business conditions, which tracks current business conditions, continued to rate the economy as worsening, as a result of lower consumer sentiment due to rising virus cases and lower consumer sentiment.
In the United States, virus cases rose by over 31,000 on Monday (6th), while in Canada there was a reported 400 new cases.
Canada has a couple major monetary policy decisions coming later this week, the first being the Bank of Canada rate statement and the second the overnight rate decision. Across the Atlantic, the European Central Bank is hosting a press conference Thursday.
All eyes will be on how the US markets open Tuesday, with the DJIA taking a pummelling at the end of last week. The tech stocks of Amazon, Apple, and Facebook collectively lowered both the DJIA and NASDAQ, with most major American indexes posting their biggest weekly losses since June.
Works Cited:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/07/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
https://www.alphachain.academy/post/optimism-for-the-us-dollar