Trump was informed most “allies” won’t help with Hormoz. Says US doesn’t need help anywayTrump on the war: A couple of weeks, not much longerTrump: NATO is making a foolish mistake. They should have been there.U.S. Treasury auctions of $13 billion of 20 year notes at a high yield of 4.817%US February pending home sales +1.8% vs -0.5% expectedUS Director of the National Counterterrorism Center resigns over Iran warDAL stock up 4%: Delta Airlines sees booming demand for travel despite oil price spike
Markets:
S&P 500 up 20 points to 6716Gold down $4 to $5000WTI crude oil up $2.78 to $92.23US 10-year yields down 2.3 bps to 4.196%AUD leads, CAD lags
Today was the first day since the start of the war where stock markets and oil didn’t move in opposite directions. So far, this war has been about energy for the market and rising crude meant weakening risk assets and higher Treasury yields.
Today, oil rose but so did stocks in a hint at diverging views between the physical market in crude and views towards the future. That’s despite Trump throwing something of a tantrum about “allies” refusing to clean up the mess in Hormuz. It’s not clear if that’s a precursor to the US abandoning efforts surrounding naval efforts or some other strategy. The sense in markets is that Trump is improvising but that he remains committed to the 4-5 week timeline at the outset.
The dollar generally softened for the second day, leading to some modest gains for the euro and pound while the yen and Canadian dollar were flat. The Australian dollar was the big winner on the day after the RBA rate hike earlier. With that, AUD is set to close back above 0.71 for the first time since Thursday. It’s also roughly back to pre-war levels.
Overall, it was possibly the quietest day since the bombs started falling but it won’t stay that way for long with the Bank of Canada and Federal Reserve rate decisions on Wednesday.
This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.