The new week in the financial markets is opening slightly quietly due to the United States having a long weekend after Independence Day. This could explain the somewhat muted response to Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, which was considerably better than expected.
In Europe, it is business as usual. European stock indices are not doing super well today due to some market pessimism, largely due to the spread of the delta variant of Covid-19 and the uncertainty surrounding OPEC+ at the moment.
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies have taken the entire weekend and more to decide what their future export quotas will look like. A modest increase of 400K barrels per day was initially negotiated, but the United Arab Emirates pushed for higher quotas, so there is still no decision on that front.
The value of the Brent crude today went up to $76.27, while the WTI moved to $75.27 per barrel.
Of interest today in stocks are the big supermarket chains in the United Kingdom. Morrisons is gaining the most, after attracting several generous merger bids. Other chains such as Tesco and Sainsbury are also gaining momentum since there appears to be broad interest in the UK supermarket sector.
Speaking of the United Kingdom, today Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to give a speech regarding the coronavirus. The PM’s most recent decision regarding the pandemic included extending the last of the lockdowns until July 19.
Now Johnson is expected to say whether there will be more extensions or if the government has faith in the success of the Covid-19 vaccination program and is willing to put it to the test against the delta variant, which is already spreading rapidly throughout the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, South Korea is also stepping up its anti-coronavirus game, which may help Asian countries in general. Seoul is looking to make manufacturing deals with both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to produce at least 1 billion doses of their mRNA vaccines. South Korea can then help vaccinate its own population and deliver doses faster to neighboring countries, which have so far lagged behind the UK, the US, and even the EU in terms of vaccinations.
Other fundamental events today included lots of PMI reports. German PMIs were worse than expected, but the overall eurozone reports were positive. The data was better than anticipated in the United Kingdom as well.
