Before scrolling down, take a guess at the three best and worst performing commodities of 2016 and 2017!
Ok now go…
2016 was a good year for commodities. The Bloomberg Commodity Index, which is a diversified benchmark for commodity investments, gained 10%.
After last night's announcement of ~20% tariffs on softwood lumber imported from Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lashed out at the Trump administration saying the U.S. could suffer from a "thickening" border as trade tensions between the two countries escalated, sending the Canadian currency to a 14 month low.
After yesterday's violent gap up in stocks across the globe in response to the "expected" outcome from the French election, today the risk on sentiment has continued if to a lesser extent, with stocks in Europe, Asia all rising while S&P futures point to a higher open. Yen, gold decline, while the euro traded as high as 1.09 this morning before fading some gains; oil is up modestly.
After 51 consecutive months, the dead CAT spell is finally over.
“Thousands of new doors opened and rents soared. This created a bubble, and like housing, that bubble has now burst.”
- Richard Hayne, Urban Outfitters CEO, March 2017
The devastation in the US retail sector is accelerating in 2017, and in addition to the surging number of brick and mortar retail bankruptcies, it is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the soaring number of store closures.