With the US closed for a holiday, equity markets around the world have been relatively quiet overnight with the Nikkei and the Hang Seng both falling about 0.6%, the Dax dipping 0.2%, and the FTSE rising about 0.3%.
Commodities have been more active today with the potential for movement in Crude Oil depending on what happens with the ongoing OPEC+ meeting. Starting last Thursday and continuing through the weekend, the group, led by Saudi Arabia, has been fighting with the UAE over production levels. The main group agreed to a 2.0 mmbbl/d increase by the end of the year (400,000 bbl/d increase over the five months from August to December), and then to hold production flat through 2022, while the UAE is looking for a larger increase to its quota.
So far WTI and Brent crude oil are holding their ground up 0.3% this morning and trading above $75.00/bbl but sentiment could change depending on whether an agreement is reached (and if so, what the terms are), talks collapse completely, or talks drag on further.
Meanwhile, in other commodity action, high temperatures across North America continue to boost cooling demand boosting natural gas another 0.8%. Copper and platinum, meanwhile, are both up 1.4%.
Service PMI reports are out from European countries this morning and have been coming in better than expected overall, led by the UK (62.4 vs street 61.7), with Germany lagging a bit (57.5 vs street 58.1). US non-manufacturing PMI comes out tomorrow due to today’s US holiday, followed by the Canadian Ivey PMI report on Wednesday. Later in the week, Chinese inflation comes out Thursday night, followed by Canadian employment on Friday morning.
Its a very quiet week for earnings reports, but we are in confession season, the time of the quarter where companies sometimes pre-announce particularly strong or particularly poor results, ahead of earnings season which starts up sometime next week.
