European and Asian market and S&P futures have resumed their slide, as geopolitical tensions between North Korea and the U.S. spiked again overnight after Pyongyang responded to the latest set of warnings by Trump, revealing a plan to fire 4 ballistic missiles at Guam by mid-August. Gold gains for a third day while Brent rose above $53.
In the second quarter of the year, one in which unlike in Q1 fund flows showed a persistent and perplexing outflow from US stocks and into European and Emerging Markets, a trading desk rumor emerged that even as institutional traders dumped stocks and retail investors piled into ETFs, a "mystery" central bank was quietly bidding up risk assets by aggressively buying stocks.
It took stocks only a few minute to "price in" the latest political shock out of Washington, and as of this morning Emini futures no longer care that Mueller has a grand jury, trading 0.08% in the green with European stocks and Asian shares all little changed as investors await the looming July jobs report, which is expected to show a slowdown in hiring from 222K to 180K but will have little impact on either the Fed's thinking or the market.
E-mini futures are fractionally lower this morning (0.08%) after Apple's surge helped the DJIA climb above 22,000 for the first time on Wednesday; Global shares declined for the first time in 4 days pressured by tech stocks: Asian shares fell, while Europe pared opening losses to trade unchanged.
Welcome to August: you may be surprised to learn that S&P 500 futures are once again levitating, higher by 0.3%, and tracking European and Asian markets. Asian equities traded higher across the board after China's Caixin Manufacturing PMI beat expectations and printed its highest since March, refuting the decline in the official PMI data reported a day earlier, while firmer commodity prices boost both sentiment and commodity stocks across Asia and Europe.