Morning Update – 18/10/2017 – by Arjun Lakhanpal
October 18, 2017Morning all.. Wall St had another very small gain in a very quiet session as did the Nikkei. The market seems rather on hold at present. FX ranges were very tight but GBP remains weak. Talks are moving too slowly for both sides.. BusinessEurope (lobby group, incl Britain) Letter to EU’s Tusk: European companies extremely concerned with slow pace of Brexit talks; European companies want to avoid cliff edge, need certainty, time to prepare for post-Brexit; Britain remaining in EU customs union, single market during transition period would be best; European companies urge British government to rapidly provide concrete negotiating proposals to advance talks. Irish PM (BBC Spotlight): splits in the UK govt make it a difficult negotiating partner for the EU in Brexit talks; “it’s quite a difficult negotiation when people who want to leave the EU in Britain don’t really seem to agree among themselves what that actually means”; he has a point! Over in the US the White House said the Fed Chair search now narrowed to five final candidates; Trump expected to announce Fed decision before he leaves for Asia trip on Nov. 3; Yellen, Warsh, Taylor, Powell, Cohn all candidates for Fed chair; Trump set to interview Yellen Thursday to discuss Fed chair job (after Yellen meeting, Trump will have discussed Fed job with all 5 Fed candidates). US Treasury: China, Germany, Japan, S. Korea, Switzerland remain on monitoring list of major trading partners that merit close attention to currency practices; no major trading partner met standard for currency manipulation in H1 2017; Chinese currency has moved recently in a direction that would help correct the bilateral trade imbalance with the US.. This morning the main event is the UK unemployment and wage data. We also get EU Construction output data. Good luck.
