It was a mostly quiet start to the news week as there were no major surprises in store for markets with the Trump/Putin meeting. It will also be a relatively quiet week on the data side, with Jackson Hole the main event of the week (but that’s only Friday).
- Navarro criticizes India’s oil trade with Russia, questions strategic alignment
- Crypto continuing to give back some of its recent gains
- Implied volatility levels for US500, NAS100 and GER40
- Qantas accepts A$90m court penalty, adds A$120m compensation fund
- India proposes GST cuts on small cars and insurance premiums
- US earnings in focus for the week ahead
- South Korea plans partial implementation of inter-Korean agreements
- Trump says Zelensky could end war immediately
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 7.1322 (vs. estimate at 7.1793)
- Hurricane Erin strengthens into a major storm near Grand Turk
- Singapore Non-Oil Exports YY -4.6% vs -1.8% expected (previous 13.0%)
- PBOC is expected to set the USD/CNY reference rate at 7.1793 – Reuters estimate
- NIKKEI225 hits new all-time highs
- Implied volatility levels for EURUSD, USDJPY & GBPUSD
- Commodities struggling a bit this morning
- FX Positioning insights for the Week ahead
- UK House Price Rightmove MM -1.3% vs -1.2% prior
- NZ Business Services Index 48.9 vs 46 Prior
- NZIER shadow board recommends a 25bp cut at this week’s meeting
- Interest rate expectations for upcoming meetings
- Russia wants security guarantees in any Ukraine peace deal
- Economic Calendar for today 18 August 2025
- Macron pushes for strong Ukraine stance ahead of Washington talks
- Early indicative FX pricing as we start the new week
Markets didn’t see much reaction at the open as the weekend didn’t provide anything worth reacting to.
Oil saw some downside at the open, but have since paired some of the earlier losses. Precious metals like gold and silver saw some early-session weakness, but both have recovered well and is trading in the green.
In FX, we saw some mild risk on price action with the NZD, AUD and CAD (high beta currencies) leading the major currencies, while the JPY and USD was weak (alongside the EUR).
The move lower in the JPY helped the Nikkei to break to fresh all-time highs, with other equity futures trading mostly in the green as well.
We saw a bit more action on the Crypto side, with BTC and ETH both continuing to push lower after its recent run higher. Seeing some profit-taking after the recent run is not too surprising though.
Apart from that, there weren’t any data releases worth mentioning, with a mostly quiet start to the week overall.
This article was written by Arno V Venter at investinglive.com.