Market Brief, North America

Measures of financial stress are easing this morning after an absolutely wild night in global markets. The dollar is consolidating its losses after enduring something resembling a “flash crash” as Asian markets opened yesterday evening, the S&P 500 is recovering from a circa-3-percent move, and ten-year Treasury yields are stabilising near 4.8 percent after rising by the most in a week since the late eighties. The trade war between the United States and China is still escalating. On Wednesday, President Trump said he was imposing a 125-percent tariff on imports from China, and the White House yesterday clarified that this...

Volatility continues to sweep across asset classes after the Trump administration’s “reciprocal” and retaliatory tariffs took effect last night, ratcheting American import taxes up to levels last seen in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The freezing of trade flows between the US and China bears a stark resemblance to the breakdown in relations between the West and the Soviet Union that led to the Cold War. US tariffs on imports from China have soared: with the average tariff rate sitting close to 20 percent ahead of Trump’s inauguration, and 10 percent added in February, another 10 percent in...

The dust is settling after a tumultuous Monday in financial markets. North American equity markets are setting up for a modestly-positive open, benchmark ten-year Treasury yields are pushing above the 4.20-percent mark, and the dollar is edging lower against all of its major trade-sensitive counterparts. To summarise yesterday’s* insanity: the S&P 500 jumped more than 8 percent on an erroneous headline suggesting that tariffs would be paused for ninety days, then plunged again when this was rebuffed by the White House, only to rise again as investors hedged against the possibility that another, more accurate version of the same headline...