Good afternoon
to be honest, I do not really understand, what May wants...the only interesting part for me in her speach has been the announcement, that the Upper-as well as Lower House will have to vote on the agreement. We will see, what comes out of it....Free Trade agreement with the US? Putin best friend with Trump? Europe weakened? That can´t be the plan of Mr.Trump, and not May´s either...we will find out more over the next few month!
Investor Confidence is Germany is very strong - Car Sales in Europe as well.
The large US gold-ETF saw inflow on Friday for the first time since 9.11.2016! Quite incredible....And gold is moving higher today, 1213 US$ as I am writing. Trump calls the US$ expensive...well, I am sure, that he is one of the smartest economists around!!! It would certainly help his currency, if he stopped getting involved in European politics.....
Even while the US$ has been weak today, the base metal complex is under some pressure. Funny enough, Nickel is holding up well, again! The market seems to be fairly complacent with regards to Indonesia´s announcement - or investors believe, that the conditions applied to nickel ore exports will keep most of the stuff in Indonesia! I have to admit, that anything else would be extremely stupid, as the ban has done excatly, what it was meant to do: Get foreign investment, and upgrade nickel ore to a higher value export good.
The market in iron ore astounds us all...I think 83,60 US$ as of yesterday represents a new high, at a time, when Australian ports are counting record export numbers, as is Brazil! There was some profit-taking in Asia earlier on, but the contract is now trading only 1% down. The numbers involved for the large 3 Australian producers are absolutle amazing: Compared to 60 US$t ( that is the upper range of what sensible analysts from Macquarie see as fundamentally acceptable ), Fortescue is making an additional 10-11 Mill$ extra PER DAY! At current prices, tehy could well be debt-free by 30th of June!!!!!RIO and BHP almost double that!! No wonder, that the Aussi-$ is trading so high at 0,7533 against the US$ in the moment, as Iron ore is the most valuable export good for Australia. Still, given possible trade-frictions between China and the US, and diminishing interest rate differentials, we should be close to the top of the trading range ( Jenniger Hughes in the FT commented on that today ).
Unfortunately, nothing much to report from the micro-side!
Have a nice evening
WS