Juneteenth today and a US Holiday, we expect market activity to be subdued. Overnight the same themes have continued with another record-breaking session on Wall Street and chipmakers driving the moves. A couple of stories of interest, namely the US House of Representatives are launching a bipartisan working group seeking to reduce China's dominance of key critical mineral supplies with a focus on EVs and Semiconductors. Whilst in China, it has been suggested that the PBOC should shake off its “taboo” regarding quantitative easing — the unorthodox central bank policy of buying government bonds — a former adviser publicly stated that the instrument should be recognize in the interest of stoking economic growth.
Domestically, the CPI data has been released and, in line with expectations, the MoM number is 0.3% just below the 0.4% consensus and the Core CPI remains at 2%, but politics dominates the news and after the London close the UK Guardian Newspaper published a new poll from IPSOS / MORI, it projects Labour will have a majority of 256 – the worst ever result for the Conservatives. Previously, the worst performance in modern history was the defeat to Tony Blair in 1997 when the Conservatives won just 165 seats, this time it will be just 115 seats!
Marketwise the yield on 10-year Treasuries was little changed at 4.22%, Bitcoin rose 1% to $65,561.04, West Texas Intermediate crude opens at $81per barrel, Gold at $2330 per ounce. USDJPY at 157.80, Cable at 1.2720 and EURUSD at 1.0740.
Data wise we get Eurozone Current Account and Construction data, nothing out of the US due to the Juneteenth celebration.
