020 7898 0500Trump cancelled the North Korea summit yesterday, citing ‘tremendous anger and open hostility’ shown by North Korea. They had called Mike Pence a ‘political dummy’ before the announcement, but then Trump once referred to Kim Jong Un as ‘little rocket man’, so, like, he who casts the first stone and all of that. On a more sober note, tensions between the two nations have now ratcheted up once more and stock markets around the world fell. What a volatile world we are living in right now.
Existing home sales in April declined by 2.5% when a drop of 0.2% had been expected. This wasn’t too much of a cause for concern, but initial jobless claims came in worse than expected too. 234,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending 19 May, which was higher than the 220,000 expected and is the highest reading for seven weeks. The dollar weakened against the euro and sterling, but it has been so consistent in its gains of late that this could just be a minor blip. We shall see over the course of the next few weeks.
Today we will see durable goods orders for April and Fed Chair Jerome Powell is due to give a speech. It will be interesting to see what he says and whether any changes to his interest rate expectations are made. If they are increased, we will likely see some significant dollar strengthening.
