News Bites
Gold continues to hold at higher levels ahead of the European open
(Kitco News) - After a strong move on Friday gold has mildly retraced overnight and trades at $1855/oz. Silver is half a percent higher and trades at $23.67/oz. In the rest of the commodities complex, copper is 1% higher and spot WTI is just shy of trading half a percent in the black.
Stocks struggled overnight as concerns over the Russia/Ukraine conflict built. The Nikkei 225 (-2.23%) and Shanghai Composite (-0.98%) both fell but the ASX (0.37%) bucked the trend due to the strong performance of the commodities market.
In FX markets, the biggest mover was NZD/USD (-0.24%) but the rest of the majors traded within ranges. In the crypto space, BTC/USD traded 0.30% higher at $42,189.
News from the weekend and overnight:
There were some reports suggesting that U.S. officials believe some Russian action on Ukraine could start as soon as Tuesday.
Fed's Daly: Being too aggressive could be destabilizing.
ECB’s Rehn says the Bank needs to look beyond short-term inflation.
Ukraine's President has invited Biden to Kyiv he said would stabilize the situation.
Irish central bank head says an ECB rate hike in June is not realistic.
BoJ conducted an unlimited bond-buying operation today.
Ukraine has requested a meeting with Russia in the next 48 hours.
Switzerland January producer and import prices +0.6% vs -0.1% m/m prior.
NZ services PMI 45.9 (prior 49.7) & Food Price Inflation +2.7% m/m (expected +0.4%).
Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlights include the Fed closed board meeting, comments from ECB's Lagarde and Fed's Bullard.
