Market Update - 19 July 2012

 

·      A lot of chatter about Greece overnight as leaders met to try and agree on €12bn of cuts to present to the Troika who arrive in town next week. Doorstop interviews afterward said agreements had been made in “principal” but more work needs to be done; no cuts will be made this year because of the worse than expected recession but asset sales will be looked at and cuts in subsequent years will make up the package.

·      The next tranche of bailout money is due in September and still needs approval from the Troika.

·      More positive earnings reports saw Blackrock, IBM, eBay and AMEX all beat earnings expectations by a small amount (a developing theme so far this season) and has sent the S&P futures higher after the close.

·     Equities charged higher in Europe and the States with the Euro STOXX up 1.51%, the CAC was the star (+1.84%) in a sea of green.

·      The S&P rose 0.67% and the DOW added 0.81%.

·      Treasury yields fell 1.5bps to 1.494% as gilt and bund yields also dropped a couple of bps each while Spain underperformed the rest, 10yr yields up 16bps to  6.875%.

·      Commodities were stronger, oil rose 0.86% in New York topping $90 for the first time since May while soft’s had another leg up, corn rising 1.69% and wheat 2.06%. Gold slipped $10 to $1574.

·      Bernanke had another session too but failed to offer anything new, suggesting there were ”theoretical limits” to the Feds policies, and that Europe would take a long time to sort out.

·      The Fed also released the beige book for June which “indicated that overall economic activity continued to expand at a modest to moderate pace in June and early July,”

·      USDMYR opened a tad lower at 3.1500-3.1560 as we expect the 3.1500 support to be tested and potentially break it to track lower to 3.1300