Christmas 2019 and All Is Calm
December 25, 2019
Many, many markets are closed today, including the United States, U.K., Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Finland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Switzerland, Croatia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, and Nigeria.
With such a lack of market leadership, the dollar has drifted up 0.2% against the Swiss franc, New Zealand dollar, and sterling, and 0.1% relative to the yen and Australian dollar. The dollar is steady against its closest neighbors, the loonie and Mexican peso, but down 0.3% versus the yuan and 0.1% against the euro.
Japan and China are open. The Japanese 10-year government bond yield slipped three basis points to -0.04%, and the Nikkei-225 index of Japanese equities fell 0.2%. China’s stock market closed unchanged.
Other countries where share prices traded today include Vietnam (+0.5%), Thailand, Taiwan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia (-0.9%), Bosnia (-0.8%), Bahrain, Russia, the U.A.E., Tunisia (+0.7%), Morocco, Oman, Jordan, Israel, Macedonia, Qatar, Serbia, and Montenegro.
Japanese corporate service prices rose 0.2% in November, leaving the 12-month rate of increase at 2.1%. In October when a 2 percentage point national sales tax increase took effect, the CSP had jumped 1.9% on month and accelerated 1.6 percentage points from a 0.5% on-year pace in September. However, on-year service price inflation is only 0.8 percentage points higher than its November 2018 reading.
The Boeing managerial shake-up remains the biggest corporate news story.
Copyright 2019, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
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