News Bites
Gold and silver head higher into the European open
(Kitco News) - Spot gold (0.26%) and silver (0.53%) start the week on the front foot. During the Asian session, sentiment has been pretty positive. Japan is off for Workers day but the ASX is trading 0.34% higher and the Shanghai Composite is also performing well rising over 1%.
In terms of weekend news, it has emerged that US President-elect Biden to name Tony Blinken as secretary of state. Blinken is no stranger to office as he served as United States Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017.
On the Brexit front, Sky News reported that the EU 'think the Brexit deal 95% agreed' but anxiety remains. However, problems still remained in three well-established areas, fisheries, governance and competition rules. Keep an eye on these three subjects this week.
There was also a report in UK press this weekend that the UK could give regulatory approval to Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine this week. This could mean the government may start the roll out as soon as December. That would be a welcome relief as the economy and vulnerable generations and population are being hit hard. Leading into Christmas any return to normality would be welcome.
In FX markets GBP starts the week on the front foot climbing higher against the majority of its counterparts. NZD is also performing well and the dollar index trades 0.13% lower. In the commodities complex, the top-performing metal is palladium (0.59%), closely followed by platinum (0.56%) but aluminium, tin and nickel all trade in the black too.
Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlights include, PMI's from the major nations, comments from BoE's Haldane, ECB's Schnabel, FOMC's Daly, Evans and BoC's Gravelle.
