As ever Donald Trump set the tone for what would have otherwise been a quiet start to the week on Sunday night, an all-caps rant from the unhinged President forcing the markets lower.
Following on from another testy G20 meeting highlighting the wealth of risks – chief among them the ‘heightening trade and geopolitical tensions’, endangering economic growth – Trump saw it fit to provide the markets with a fresh example of what the international forum was talking about with his latest tweet-storm.
With a sausage finger pressing caps-lock like it was the Big Red Button, he responded to a speech from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani by screaming 'Never, ever threaten the United States’ unless the Middle Eastern nation wants to ‘Suffer the consequences the like of which few through history have ever suffered before'.
It’s a sign of how routine these bellicose outbursts have become that the markets managed to somewhat limit their losses after the bell. The FTSE dropped around 50 points as the week got underway, its commodity stocks broadly in the red as the UK index fell back towards 7625. The DAX, meanwhile, slipped half a percent to teeter just above 12500, with the CAC sliding 0.6% to duck under 5400.
As for the forex markets, they were fairly sanguine, taking a break after Trump’s Fed-attacking antics last week. The pound managed to nudge up 0.1% against the dollar, helping it towards its best price in 6 days, but that was about it, with the rest of the pairings pretty flat.
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