Top daily news
Global stocks are moving in different directions currently after Wall Street closed mixed Friday. Apple shares rose 1.7% Friday outperforming market, Microsoft shares added 0.54% as Pentagon asked Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle for bids on new cloud contracts after the Pentagon scrapped its plans for a single-vendor cloud contract for Microsoft worth up to $10 billion over a decade.
Forex news
The Dollar strengthening is intact currently. The live dollar index data show the ICE US Dollar index, a measure of the dollar’s strength against a basket of six rival currencies, rose 0.5% on Friday.
Both GBP/USD and EUR/USD reversed their climbing Friday despite the European Central Bank report euro zone’s current account surplus grew in September when a decline was expected. Both euro and Pound are lower against the Dollar currently. AUD/USD reversed its advancing while USD/JPY continued climbing Friday with the yen lower against the Greenback currently and the Australian dollar higher.
Stock Market news
Futures on US equity benchmarks are higher currently with 10-year US treasury yields up at 1.562%. The Wall Street closed mixed Friday as investors largely shrugged off House passage of Biden's US$1.75 trillion social spending bill: the three main US stock benchmarks recorded daily returns ranging from -0.8% to +0.4%.
European stock indexes are up currently despite concerns over tightening restrictive measures after Austria into a full lockdown starting today. Indexes ended lower on Friday led by bank shares. Asian indexes are mixed today with Shanghai Composite Index leading gains as the People’s Bank of China kept its one-year loan prime rate unchanged at 3.85% earlier in the day.
Commodity Market news
Brent is inching higher currently amid reports after Japan said it was weighing releasing oil reserves. Prices retreated on Friday as White House pressed the OPEC producer group again to maintain adequate global supply. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures plunged 3.6% but is higher currently. Brent crude lost 2.9% to $78.89 a barrel on Friday.
Gold Market News
Gold prices are edging down today. December gold slid 0.5% settling at $1851.60 an ounce on Friday – logging the lowest finish since mid-November and a 0.9% loss for the week.