China

After warning about cracking down on 'virtual' capital outflows earlier in the week, Chinese officials have come out more directly against Bitcoin this morning with the country's central bank urging China's institutional and individual investors should take a rational approach to investing in virtual currencies. Bitcoin in China has legged lower on the news.

As Reuter reports,

Bitcoin prices had showed abnormal fluctuations, the Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a notice.

 

While China's unprecedented currency moves have quickly become the main talking point across global markets which otherwise have started off 2017 in an eerily calm fashion, it is the sudden surge in two-way volatility that has emerged a major threat to global market stability.

European shares fell modestly, Asian equities declined for the first day in three, and US equity futures were unchanged before the December U.S. nonfarm payrolls report. China’s offshore yuan fell the most in a year to pare a record weekly rally, while Mexico’s peso climbed after the central bank sold dollars. Oil was trading lower in early trading.

Having warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump yesterday, through Chinese state media, that he’ll be met with "big sticks" if he tries to ignite a trade war or further strain ties, China’s central government has reportedly "compiled possible countermeasures" against "well-known U.S. companies or ones that have large Chinese operations."

In a special report by Barclays' Michael Cohen, the analyst lays out what he believes are the 13 commodity "black swan threats" for the current year, divided into two "shock" categories: supply and demand, split evenly between bearish and bullish.