- European stock market sentiment was overwhelmingly weak today. BMW shares lost more than 10%, after the company revised downward its expected 2024 deliveries and pointed to problems with its brake systems. Volkswagen posted nearly 4% declines
- Shares of luxury watch company Swatch Group continued their decline and slid today to levels not seen since 2020, although the company indicated a 10% increase in sales in China in recent quarters
- Indices on Wall Street are mostly posting not big volatility today. The US2000 loses a whopping 1.2%, testing the 200-session exponential moving average while US100 gains 0.3% on Oracle 11% surge
- In the second part of the session, the indexes halted the downward impulse and are recording a slight improvement in sentiment; nevertheless, we could characterize the current mood in the US stock market as lackluster, despite several recent weak trading sessions;
- DJIA loses almost 0.5% today; the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) erased quite strong upward move and is currently gaining less than 2% during the day
- Shares of U.S. technology giant Oracle are up more than 12%, after surprisingly strong second-quarter results for the year, buoyed by its cloud and AI services sector. Despite that, company failed to improve overall sentiments across the technology sector, where Hewlett Packard loses almost 8% today, dropping below EMA200
- The U.S. dollar gains slightly, with EURUSD trading down 0.12%, although yields on 10-year U.S. bonds slid more than 4 basis points today, to 3.65%.
- Gold is gaining less than 0.3%, while silver is up 0.2%. Shares of the mining company that operates in the metals market, Sibanye Stillwater, lost more than 8% today and slid to historic lows.
- JP shares. Morgan are trading down nearly 7% after the bank warned that net interest income (NII) is likely to turn out to be quite a bit lower in 2025 than expected given the scale of Fed rate cuts
- NATGAS is trading on elevated volatility, due to Hurricane Francine, which reached the US coast today, in the state of Louisiana, where most of the key US LNG terminals are located
- Brent crude oil (OIL) posted a nearly 4% decline today, buoyed by concerns about demand. The market was not helped by a rather 'favorable' OPEC+ report, which expects flat y/y oil demand throughout 2024, nor by concerns over the hurricane, which forced some oil rigs to abandon production
- Sentiment among small, U.S. businesses fell to 91.5 in August from 93.7 in July, according to the NFIB Survey. The reading signals that July's surprisingly higher reading may have been merely a seasonal phenomenon, while overall sentiment among smaller companies in the US remains low by historical standards
- Fitch Ratings expects the Fed's expected monetary easing cycle to be quiet and relatively shallow given historical norms
- Most economists in a Bloomberg survey give little chance of a 50 bp policy easing at any of this year's Fed meetings. Most expect 75bp (3 times 25bp each) cuts this year (unchanged from the August survey)
- US Steel saw a very weak start to the session, managing to erase roughly half of the declines in the later part of the session, and losing about -4% after reports of a planned Japanese delegation of Nippon Steel to the US. The conglomerate is expected to negotiate with the Americans over the acquisition of a strategic U.S. steelmaker; market expectations indicate that this is unlikely, given the issues raised by regulators citing national security
- In the agricultural commodities market, wheat and coffee are the best performers today, gaining more than 1%. Nearly 2% declines are seen in sugar, cocoa and soybean futures
Source: xStation5
