Volatile week spurred by renewed U.S.-China trade tensions and escalating U.S. – Iran frictions. President Trump’s start-of-the-week tweet threatening more and increased tariffs on Chinese goods increased global growth concerns pushing U.S. stock markets and U.S. Treasury yields lower and the U.S. dollar higher.
espite the previous week’s strong GDP report and Friday’s strong payroll report, concerns of stubbornly low price and wage inflation combined with concerns of sluggish consumer spending and business investment led the FOMC to keep the Fed Funds target rate unchanged while indicating there is no strong reason to adjust rates either way.
A holiday-shortened trading week and mixed U.S. and weak German economic reports left U.S. stock markets unchanged and commodity markets lower despite continued U.S-China trade agreement optimism and stronger-than-expected Chinese GDP growth and industrial production numbers released on Tuesday.
Initially falling early in the week on the IMF’s reduced global and U.S. economic growth forecast for 2019, commodity and U.S. stocks markets finished the week higher after strong U.S. bank earnings and Chinese trade and lending reports on Friday.
Positive economic reports from both the U.S. and China combined with increased optimism over a U.S.-China trade agreement pushed U.S stock and commodity markets higher last week.
Continued concerns of U.S. economic growth negatively affected by lower global growth and statements of some Federal Reserve Bank officials indicating it’s too soon to consider lowering rates, limited U.S. stock market gains and helped push commodity markets lower through Wednesday last week.