Summary:
- OPEC reach new agreement to increase output
- Stocks rise despite political and trade worries
- CAD sinks on soft data points
- Euro fades after earlier gaining on PMIs
- Bitcoin drops on hacking inquiry
The week’s OPEC meeting in Vienna was highly anticipated and threw up its fair share of twists and turns but when all is said and done the group has managed to reach a revised agreement on their level of output. The outcome represents a victory for Saudi Arabia, with oil minister Khalid al Falih saying as he left the meeting that the new arrangement amounts to roughly a 1m-barrels-a-day increase.
According to reports in the Spiegel, Germany’s SPF party is preparing for new elections, presumably as they expect the Merkel coalition government to collapse. As well as this the EU sanctions on the US have come in today, but despite quite a few negative sentiment stories stocks have enjoyed a good session, with gains seen in most major bourses.
The latest data from Canada has come in on the soft side with both inflation and consumer spending figures missing targets. The CPI Y/Y came in at 2.2%, marking a pretty large miss on the 2.6% expected. The core reading was broadly inline with expectations but this remains well below the headline and overall this is a poor data point for the Loonie.
The Euro earlier built on yesterday’s gains with the currency edging higher despite a fairly mixed set of PMI readings. A package of preliminary services PMIs from European economies for June turned out to be a decent surprise disclosing a wider divergence between services and manufacturing though.
There’s been some pretty major declines in the crypto space today after the South Korean government launches an investigation into hacking. The inquiry will concerns two crypto exchanges – Bithumb and Coinrail. There are double digit declines seen in Ethereum, Litecoin and Dash with Ripple and Bitcoin not holding up much better.