Summary:

  • Gold moved higher to the $1350 mark

  • US equities seem unimpressed by the attack in Syria

  • Aluminum trades at the 7-year high

  • NOK is the weakest currency in the G10 while GBP is the strongest one

  • Bitcoin trades a notch below $8000 mark

All three major stock benchmarks from Wall Street opened higher after the weekend. Dow Jones (US30) is the top gainer while Nasdaq (US100) lags behind both, Dow and S&P 500 (US550). Bank of America (BAC.US) is trading lower on the day despite reporting better-than-expected earnings. Netflix (NFLX.US) will report its earnings few minutes before the session closes.

With Monday’s economic calendar being almost empty investors awaited US retail sales and NY Empire readings as they were the sole ones worth to watch today. The headline retail sales reading has shown an increase in the value of sales in March while the core gauge remained unchanged. The Empire reading also turned to be unfavourable for the greenback.

This will be another interesting week on the markets with geopolitics mixing up with a relatively intensive data calendar. On the geopolitical front markets seem to be relieved after a strike on Assad’s positions in Syria. Sure, military strike is not what markets want in the first place but in this case it was pretty evident that some kind of intervention needed to occur and the question was about repercussions.

Looking around financial markets one may notice that investors decisively shrugged off mounting geopolitical risks in Syria where air strikes took place over the weekend.Therefore, the ultimate fallout is likely to be contained, and then investors may put more emphasis on macroeconomic readings as well as a trade war thread anew. A modest response to the Syrian revelations is perfectly mirrored in the German DE30 which keeps trading within its bullish channel.

Over the weekend the cryptocurrency market saw a surge in the valuations of many coins.The famous Bitcoin managed to climb back above $8000 mark moving as high as to the vicinity of $8400 handle on Sunday. On the other hand Ripple managed to test resistance level at $0.7 just to fall back to $0.62 afterwards.