CNH

This weekend’s baffling march on Moscow by the Wagner Group of mercenaries ended without any appreciable impact on global energy prices or broader financial markets. Both the West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude benchmarks are essentially unchanged, equity futures look incrementally softer, and the VIX “fear index” is holding near Friday’s post-pandemic lows. The yen is modestly stronger after Japanese officials stepped up currency jawboning efforts last night, with Masato Kanda, Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, warning that exchange rate moves had become “one-sided” and that he wouldn’t “rule out any options” in dealing with it – language that has...

The Canadian dollar is trading on a slightly weaker footing after Statistics Canada reported the first loss of jobs in nine months, suggesting that the economy was beginning to struggle with higher borrowing costs ahead of this week’s rate hike. The country lost 17,300 jobs in May and the unemployment rate ticked up to 5.2 percent from 5.0 percent as the part-time, self-employed, and services sector categories moved into contraction. The number of hours worked (sometimes a better read of underlying conditions) fell 0.4 percent month-over-month, and wages grew 5.1 percent year-over-year, down from 5.2 percent in the prior month. We think the...