Struggling to hold down a rather unpleasant geopolitical breakfast – one that takes in fresh flavours like the worrying situation between China and Hong Kong and Argentina’s peso woes, alongside more familiar tastes like Brexit, the trade war and global growth concerns – Europe opened in the red on Tuesday.
One of the few instruments to stomach this problematic porridge was gold. The precious metal climbed 0.7% to strike a fresh 6-year high of $1534, a fact that in and of itself reflects the moods of the markets right now. In contrast, the FTSE ducked 0.3% lower, the same level of losses as seen by the DAX and the CAC.
While the European indices chew over the headlines, the pound is fretfully prepping for the UK’s latest jobs report. Against the dollar it dipped 0.2%, keeping it near, if not quite at, its recent 32-month nadir; against the euro, a 0.1% bounce allowed it to avoid the scary 10-year lows the currency found itself at in the early moments of Monday morning.
Analysts are expecting a wage growth reading of 3.7%, including bonuses. That’d be a substantial increase on the previous month’s 3.4%, and the highest level in over a decade. It also, realistically, might not mean much to the pound; wages can skyrocket, they’re not going to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Elsewhere, the unemployment rate is set to remain steady at 3.8%, with the claimant change count rising from 38k to 42k.
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