China Manufacturing, better than expected. European equities are set to retrace some of yesterday’s losses and open higher as bulls sense a big day for economic data may go the way. Overnight a better than expected HSBC Manufacturing PMI from China has nudged sentiment in the favour of the bulls; and they will be hoping that the Flash Manufacturing and Services PMI across Europe will be able to follow suit and keep the momentum going.
This afternoons US Manufacturing PMI and New Home sales are also expected to show an improvement so traders will want to be positioned for a global run of good economic data. Profit taking pushed the Dow Jones 42 points lower yesterday to 15,423. As we are in the middle of corporate earnings season there is a fair amount of pressure on valuations reaching multi years highs. Understandably, some investors have started to doubt that certain companies will be able to keep meeting those high expectations.
Amid a preliminary report from the European Commission showing that consumer confidence in the euro zone rose for eleventh month in October, the shared currency ended rather flat at 1.3775. The counterbalance piece of news was the expectation that the economic growth in the common area is about to moderate to 0.2% for the third quarter after a 0.3% rise in the previous one.
Concerns the glut in the US crude supplies could put further downside pressure on oil prices definitely came true with the WTI prices losing another $1.03 to $97.06 a barrel. It was the third slump in a row as the weekly oil inventories report from the US Department of Energy indicated a build of 5.2 million barrels versus estimates for 2.7 million barrels rise. If India stayed true to its affection for gold, China the second biggest consumer in the world has seen demand for the precious metal waning. As a consequence gold prices retraced yesterday, losing $7.2 to $1333.3 helped also by a slight rebound in the greenback.