Summary:
- DE30 surges higher to reach highest level since early November
- US stocks hits record peak
- Gold rises as COT positioning reveals interesting insight
- BTC pulls back as CME launches futures
- ZAR surges on ANC leadership vote
Global stocks begin a new trading week with optimism as the US Congress is expected to pass the long-awaited tax bill this week. The DE30 has gained around 200 points on Friday’s closing level and has rallied strongly throughout the day.
A technical overview of the DE30 can be found here.
Whilst they haven’t gained as much as their European peers yet, US markets are in an equally bullish mood with all three major indices breaking higher today into uncharted territory. All-time peaks in the US500, US100 and US30 come on the back of a stellar year of gains and the US500 is now not far from the 2700 handle.
The latest report from the CFTC illustrated that the net speculative positioning in gold and silver tumbled in the week ending 12 December. As far as gold is concerned the net positioning slid from 173k to 107k while the net positioning in silver plunged from 31.4k to as low as 9.9k – the lowest point since July 2017. This shift in positioning lessens the case for a sell-off and Gold has in fact hit a 2-week high today after moving back above 1260.
A week after a launch of Bitcoin futures at CBOE the same scenario took place at CME on Sunday, the largest futures exchange. However, as opposed to a rise in Bitcoin price after the start of trading at CBOE there was just a mediocre jump this time round after the price retreated. The futures opened at $20,650 and it rose slightly but it fell back to $18,760 about four hours of trading. BTCUSD is currently lower by round 3% on the day.
South Africa’s ruling ANC party have conducted a new leadership vote today as they look to elect Jacob Zuma’s successor. There has yet to be official confirmation of the result but the early indications seem to suggest that Ramaphosa has won according to reports from Reuters and the opposition leader who tweeted “it’s a boy!”. The FX markets have seemingly responded positively to this expected outcome with the South African Rand soaring by more than 2% against the US dollar.