Today the Reserve Bank of Australia held its October monetary policy meeting. The regulator left the interest rate unchanged at 0.1%, as expected. In addition, Australia also published an uplifting balance of trade report for August. Data on retail sales for the same month met the forecast of -1.7%.
In Europe, it is PMI day again. Spain’s services PMI failed to meet investors’ expectations in September, and the composite index was understandably lower than the previous month. Italy fared in the exact same way.
Germany, however, did better than expected in September. The Markit services PMI was slightly higher than anticipated at 56.2, and the composite index was also better than forecasted at 55.5.
The eurozone-wide composite PMI also exceeded investors’ expectations, coming in at 56.2 against a forecast of 56.1.
Furthermore, the United Kingdom published the same two metrics today, and both were slightly better than anticipated, in line with the positive tone from Europe, despite the energy problems in the region.
Later today we expect the balance of trade for August from Canada and the United States. The US will also publish its non-manufacturing PMI for September today.
In other news, the overall market sentiment today seems to be slightly more positive than yesterday, with risk aversion decreasing. All major US stock indices are correcting upward today, but not by much.
The US tech sector remains in focus after yesterday’s massive outage on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (the last two are owned by Facebook). All three services were down globally for at least six hours, the longest such outage seen, and one that was unprecedented for a company of Facebook’s size and resources.
As for the commodities market, crude oil has officially surpassed $80 per barrel. Yesterday OPEC+ members decided not to increase their production quotas, despite the spike in demand in recent weeks. Thus, the Brent crude climbed to $81.74, while the WTI reached $77.97 per barrel.
