On Thur, US equities and bond markets were closed for Thanksgiving. The US
stock market will close early at 1 pm ET when it reopens on Fri.
Risk aversion is the sudden trading theme on Fri. As of 9.05 am Singapore time,
the Dow Jones futures and the S&P 500 futures were trading lower by 0.56%
and 0.46% respectively. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 fell 1.9% amid growing
predictions of faster Federal Reserve policy tightening to curb inflation and as
traders evaluated risks from a new coronavirus variant of concern.
Scientists in South Africa are studying the recently identified variant amid fears it
could spread internationally. The rand weakened beyond 16 per dollar for the
first time in a year.
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which measures the strength of the greenback
against a basket of currencies, fell 0.1% to 96.774 on Thur.
On Thur, Eurozone bond yields fell for the second consecutive session, as
investors expect the ECB to rise its inflation forecast again. The yield on the
German 10-year government bond fell 2.3 basis points (bps) to -0.251%.
On Fri, at the time of writing, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note slipped
nearly 5.0 bps to 1.58%.
Still, European equity markets finished higher on Thur. The UK FTSE gained
0.33%, France's CAC 40 rose 0.48%, while the German DAX advanced 0.25%.
OPEC expects the coordinated release of reserves to massively swell the global
oil surplus to 2.3m barrels a day in Jan and 3.7m in Feb, gaining from 400,000
barrels in Dec. The front-month Brent futures closed down 3 US cents at
US$82.22/bbl on Thur.
Investors have poured almost $900b into equity ETFs and long-only funds in
2021, beating the combined total of the past 19 years, according to data from
Bank of America and EPFR Global.
