020 7898 0500Following a weekend spent heavily criticising Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation, Trump started the week by ordering a ban on Americans buying a cryptocurrency rolled out by Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro created the currency to try and help Venezuela’s failing economy where, remarkably, inflation is expected to hit 13,000% this year.
There were no major economic data releases in the US yesterday, but the dollar fell against the euro and sterling following news of a step forward in the Brexit withdrawal agreement. In addition, the stock markets retreated following the growing scandal at Facebook and its involvement with Cambridge Analytica. Mark Zuckerberg lost around $4 billion from the fall in Facebook’s value, although he is still worth approximately $71 billion. This is a situation that is unlikely to go away anytime soon and it will be interesting to see what more is uncovered and what happens as a result.
It is another quiet day for economic data in the US, but tomorrow is a big day as we will see the Federal Reserve interest decision, existing home sales and the all-important Fed press conference. If the tone is a hawkish one we might see the dollar retracing some of yesterday’s losses.
