Investing.com - Here are the top five things you need to know in financial markets on Thursday, March 15:
1. Incoming Trump economic adviser backs hardline against China
Larry Kudlow has accepted to become U.S. President Trump’s new National Economic Council director, replacing Gary Cohn who resigned after the commander in chief announced plans to implement steel and aluminum tariffs.
In an interview with CNBC not long after accepting the post late Wednesday, Kudlow backed Trump’s hardline trading stance against China.
“I must say as somebody who doesn't like tariffs, I think China has earned a tough response not only from the United States," Kudlow said.
The remarks from the incoming economic advisor added to worries of the impact of Trump’s reported plan to impose tariffs on $60 billion of Chinese imports, targeting the technology and telecommunications sectors as part of his campaign to reduce trade deficits. Traders feared that any attempt to impose trade restrictions will lead to a tit-for-tat trade war between the world’s two largest economics.
“A thought that I have is the United States could lead a coalition of large trading partners and allies against China, or to let China know that they're breaking the rules left and right,” he added.
Outside of trade, Kudlow also backed his stance for “King dollar”, his term for a strong U.S. currency.
“If you keep rates minimal, if you keep regulations and government spending minimal, if you keep the dollar sound and steady, you're going to have a terrific economy,” he explained.
2. Stocks take break from trade worries
Although Wall Street closed lower for a third consecutive session a day earlier, American equities looked set for a recovery on Thursday. U.S. stock futures pointed to a slightly higher open on Wall Street. At 6:03AM ET (10:03GMT), the blue-chip Dow futures gained 53 points, or 0.21%, S&P 500 futures rose 4 points, or 0.15%, while the Nasdaq 100 futures traded up 6 points, or 0.08%.
Elsewhere, European stocks were also in the green, supported by a string of positive earnings reports,
Earlier, Asian shares closed lower on Thursday, following Wall Street lower on the back of trade war worries.
3. Dollar steady ahead of economic data
The dollar held steady near one-week lows against major rivals on Friday as investors turned their attention to economic data.
Weekly jobless claims, February export and import prices, along with the NY Empire State and Philadelphia Fed manufacturing indices for March will all be released at 8:30AM ET (12:30GMT).
Worries that global trade tensions would act as a drag on the global economy had placed downward pressure on the greenback, which hit a one-week low of 89.54 on Wednesday. At 6:05AM ET (10:05GMT), the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, slipped 0.02% at 89.73.
4. Oil holds slight gains after IEA report
Oil prices traded with slight gains on Thursday, virtually unchanged following forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The IEA increased its global demand growth outlook for 2018 by 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1.5 million bpd.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia forecast was raised to 32.4 million bpd from 32.3 million bpd in February. Its forecasts for non-OPEC supply, was unchanged at 1.8 million bpd.
IEA’s forecasts came a day after the OPEC monthly report predicted that non-OPEC producers would boost supply by 1.66 million bpd in 2018.
The relentless increase in U.S. crude output, which hit another record last week by climbing to 10.38 million bpd, up by more than 23% since mid-2016, continues to fuel concerns that OPEC will be unable to reduce the global supply glut, even with production curbs.
U.S. crude oil futures rose 0.15% to $60.91 at 6:07AM ET (10:07GMT), while Brent oil edged forward 0.06% to $64.93.
5. Cryptocurrencies sink double-digits, wiping $60 billion off of market cap
Major cryptocurrencies continued to sink more than 10% across the board on Thursday as concerns over increased regulation fears or Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL)'s recent decision to ban crypto ads continued to weigh on the digital asset class.
The selloff has wiped more than $60 billion off of total cryptocurrency market cap which was last at around $318.0 billion on Thursday from $372.9 billion a day before.
At 6:09AM ET (10:09GMT), Bitcoin, the world's biggest virtual currency by market cap, was down around 13% to $7,882.40.
Other major cryptocurrencies were also lower, with Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, falling about 14.3% to $590.31.
The third largest cryptocurrency Ripple lost roughly 13.77% to trade at $0.66900.