Against the Grain

Another very quiet 24 hours can the markets run this calm for a third day, it looked like that with metals seeing steady gains then wiped out in the last 30 minutes? At the time of writing have not been able to get a handle on why but DJI down on the day, gold at 1107, oil 81.5, € 1.364 and cu 7420 with ni taking the biggest hit on the day.

LME Select volumes and ranges in Asia were extremely low as markets stand back waiting for the next trend. In these conditions a miniscule move in the US$ can boomerang cu US4 20 / 30 either way. Chinese Feb combined cu imports are reported to have risen 10% to 322 kt which equates to a 2% fall yoy; their iron ore imports rose 6% mom to 49.38 million tonnes. The LME stock trend the same as the market ignored them as they followed the US$. As the dealers moved to the floor the US$ broke above € 1.36 and metals moved higher led by pb as it narrowed the US$ 120 spread to zn. With half an hour to go the DJI was unchanged and US$ weaker (€ 1.3670) pushing metals to their highs then for a small equity dip and US$ recovery the metals gave back most of their gains and more cu lost US$ 100.

In Asia the Australian Mch Westpac consumer confidence index was 117.3 (Feb 117), as Jan home loans fell 7.9% (-5.1%) and investment lending rose 0.9% (+1.6%). The Feb Chinese exports rose 46% yoy (Jan +21%) with some saying the increase could be affected by exports brought forward by Easter orders ahead of the CNY. Imports increased 45% yoy (86%) which saw the trade surplus at a one year low US$ 7.6 billion. Much more Chinese data Thurs. In Europe Jan French industrial production rose 1.6% (-0.2%) boosted by the utilities in the cold weather (Dec -0.2%) yoy +3.5% (-1.8%) and manufacturing +0.8% (-0.9%) yoy +4.4% (-1.4%) in Italy IP rose 2.6% (-0.2%) and yoy -3.3% (-2.2%). The UK Jan industrial production fell 0.4% (+0.5%) yoy -1.5% (-3.7%) and manufacturing down 0.9% (+0.9%) yoy +0.2% (-1.9%). All yoy data reflects the server slump this time last year. The Italian Q4 GDP was -0.3% (Q3 +0.5%) and yoy -3% (-4.8%).

Overnight the weekly ABC consumer sentiment survey was unchanged at -49. The weekly MBA mortgage applications +0.5% (+14.6%). That’s it for data today except for Jan wholesale inventories that fell 0.2% (-1%) and some volatile weekly Department of Energy inventory data.