Following the bump in Eurozone PMIs this morning, Markit reports November US manufacturing at 53.9 (better than 53.5 expected) and its highest since Oct 2015, showing "further signs of factories and their customers moving away from destocking to inventory-building amid a more optimistic outlook."
However, hope in the PMI survey seems to be decoupling from reality in actual production.
Following news that its Alzheimer's drug has failed final stage trials, Eli Lilly stock is crashing this morning to 2 year lows. The 'safe haven', 'paid-to-wait' stock has tumbled almost 15% - erasing over 6 years of dividends, and sparking contagious selling across Biotech stocks.
Russia gold buying accelerated in October with the Russian central bank buying a very large 48 metric tonnes or 1.3 million ounces of gold bullion.
This is the largest addition of gold to the Russian monetary reserves since 1998 and could be seen as a parting 'gift' by Prime Minister Putin to his rival ex-President Obama.
The Russian central bank gold purchase is the biggest monthly gold purchase of this millennium.
As we showed yesterday, while the rest of the European bond market has suffered from the some "trumpflation-linked" weakness in the long end as US Treasurys in the aftermath of the Trump election as inflation and new supply fears grow, short-dated German bund yields unexpectedly plunged to record lows...
In a quiet overnight session in which Japan was closed, European shares are mixed as financials and auto weigh, Asian stocks rise led by materials while S&P futures little changed against a backdrop of the continuing commodity rally with oil holding near $48 a barrel, up fractionally on the session. Against a basket of currencies, the dollar index was up slightly at 101.12, very close to a 14-year peak. The dollar also kept most of its recent hefty gains on the yen at 111.05 though it has met resistance around 111.35 in the last couple of sessions