When I survey the scene in markets after one day of post-Iran war trading, there isn’t much surprising given the news.
Naturally, oil rallied and the 8% climb is about what I would have expected given the broad attack and retaliation. A critical detail shortly after the war yesterday was Trump touting a 4-5 week war, which helped everyone to put it into perspective. Now that’s not exactly written in stone so you have to qualify the chance that it escalates (as war often does).
Given that, the strength of the US dollar rally was tempered. Yes, we saw some weakness in the euro given the oil and natural gas risks but the overall moves were moderate. I would have expected more yen strength but it lagged on energy worries and that’s a worrisome signal for the yen in general as it loses the traditional safe haven bid.
AUD and CAD quickly rebounded on higher commodity prices, which I also didn’t find surprising.
Gold rallied hard at first but profit taking hit and it fell back to unchanged. I would tend to think that gold will continue to be bid as long as the conflict continues but we’re past the seasonal tailwinds and there are downside risks if/when the war ends.
The surprise for me was bonds. US 10-year yields finished 8 bps higher on the day to 4.04% after falling below the big figure late last week. Some of that is profit taking as the war doesn’t look too crazy but I’m surprised by the quick turnaround.
Technically, the bounced back above 4% is modestly bullish. It’s a big outside day and it has backing with oil prices likely to cause inflation worries (if crude stays higher). I will be watching carefully in the days ahead to see if it can test and break 4.10%. If so, that could confirm a bottom in yields and (at least) indicate a range trade going forward, until the outlook for the economy clears.
This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.
