Morning Update – 22/08/2017 – by Arjun Lakhanpal

Morning all.. Wall ST had a mixed session but closed almost at unchanged on the day as some calm returned to markets. The Nikkei was lower, closing down marginally but ignoring a brief rally in USDJPY.. Most currencies were extremely quiet overnight with the exception to JPY weakening 0.3% against the USD; FX vols were unchanged. EUR started to trend lower ahead of Jackson Hole as the market anticipates Mario Draghi speech in the hope of clues on the direction of the currency. In commodities oil prices edged higher after falling 2% on Mondays close, Brent was up 0.5% trading to $51.90 a barrel. In equities, Asian shares climbed overnight attributed to gains led in Hong Kong from the corporate sector. In the news, President Trump has made an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan to add up to an additional 4000 troops into the country, where they will remain until a stable and enduring peace environment has been created; Trump further added pressure of Pakistan to crack down on areas harbouring terrorists. Turning to the White House, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted Congress will raise the country’s debt limit in time to prevent an unprecedented default stating “Everybody understands, this is not a Republican issue, this is not a Democrat issue. We need to be able to pay our debts.” Looks like being another quiet session with the focus still on stocks performance.. This morning we get UK Public sector net borrowing data and German ZEW.. Good luck..