Business

After repeatedly calling NATO 'obsolete' during the 2016 campaign cycle, President Trump will be joined shortly by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for their first joint press briefing.  Trump is expected to discuss America’s "100% commitment" to the alliance but is also expected to reiterate his calls for all NATO member states to increase military spending to 2% of their economic output to strengthen the alliance’s long-term capabilities and reduce the economic burdens on the Unites States.  The Express reported earlier on comments made by a White House official regarding today's m

It was bound to happen sooner or later: having flipflopped on virtually everything else, moments ago, in an interview with the WSJ, Trump also backtracked on his strong-dollar policy and in an interview with the WSJ, has said that the "US dollar is getting too strong", that the "strong dollar will ultimately hurt the US', and as a result, he preferes a low interest rate policy.

The headlines from Dow Jones:

The relentless growth of passive investing in general, and ETFs in particular, has been extensively discussed on the pages over the past few years, most recently overnight when we presented a note from Convergex which laid out some ideas how investors can profit from the unstoppable - for now - shift from active, and expensive, management to cheaper, passive forms of asset allocation.

Another night of ugliness in Asia as the 'froth' is blasted out of the exuberant hot-money-chased commodity markets. Chinese steel and iron ore futures tumbled on Wednesday to the lowest prices in months as market sentiment turned bearish on the demand outlook.

As Reuters reports, China's producer price inflation cooled for the first time in seven months in March, pressured by fears that Chinese steel production is higher than demand, leaving a glut of the metal later this year.

With the 30Y trading comfortably in repo today, with no tightness as indicated by the +0.7% repo rate, it seemed possible that the auction would join this week's previous 2 auctions of 3 and 10 Year paper by printing with a modest tail. So when the Treasury announced results from today's 29-Year 10-Month reopening, few were surprised that the High Yield of 2.938% tailed the When Issued of 2.929% by 0.9bps, suggesting yet another mediocre auction. 27.01% of the bids at the high yield were accepted.