Building on yesterday’s afternoon rebound in North America which finished with the main US indices up 0.1% to 0.4%, US index futures are up 0.1% to 0.3% as stocks try to claw back some of their losses from earlier in the week. European bourses are stronger this morning with the Dax up 1.25% and the FTSE up 1.0%. So far, this action appears to be more of a trading bounce since there have been no overnight changes in the Ukraine War and the US 10-year treasury note yield continues to climb toward 2.70%.
In commodity and currency action today, WTI crude oil is up 1.1% but remains below $100.00/bbl. Brent Crude us up 0.75% and Natural Gas is up 2.0%. In metals action, Platinum is up 2.7%, copper is up 1.0% and gold is flat. In currency trading, the Canadian Dollar is steady after yesterday’s federal budget, but the Pound is down 0.4% and Bitcoin is down 0.3%.
Canada’s employment numbers are out today and were mixed. Jobs increased by 72.7K which was a pretty good month relative to historical averages but was short of the 80K street estimate, and last month’s stellar 336K, which was boosted by some COVID restrictions coming off. The unemployment rate declined to 5.3%, its lowest level since at least 2007 (which is as far back as the data I looked at goes) and was slightly better than the 5.4% street estimate. Wage inflation remains an issue as the growth rate for average hourly earnings increased to 3.4% from 3.3% last month.
