The greenback remains on the defensive against most counterparts
Wall Street stoсks continued to outperform its global peers on Monday, with the Nasdaq surging to a record high close, while the S&P 500 approached its record level amid another rally in technology stocks. Nvidia was among the best performers ahead of the company’s quarterly results due on Wednesday. On the data front, the latest Empire State Manufacturing Survey showed that the index for general business conditions came in at 3.7 versus 17.2 previously and 15.0 expected. Still, investors mostly shrugged off another weak report and focused on tech stocks instead.
On Tuesday, Asian markets were mixed, being unfazed by Wall Street’s tech-inspired rally as Sino-US tensions weighed on optimism after the Trump administration announced it would further tighten restrictions on China’s Huawei Technologies Co, aimed at cracking down on its access to commercially available chips. Still, the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.19% during today’s session.
European equities opened lower today, with stocks trading relatively steady amid a lack of fresh economic updates and other significant news. The Stoxx Europe 600 was wavering between small gains and losses as of writing. According to the latest news, China repeated that it firmly opposed the US’ suppression of Huawei. Meanwhile, the ECB vice president Luis de Guindos said that the European banks were not likely to recover from the virus crisis before 2022, and the recovery of the Eurozone economy will be a vital factor in banks’ solvency.
Meanwhile, the greenback remains on the defensive against most counterparts on Tuesday. EURUSD has climbed back to a two-year high of 1.1915 and could see further gains in the short term if the upcoming economic data out of the United States disappoint and add to the selling pressure surrounding the greenback later in the day. In the immediate term, the pair needs to cling to the 1.19 figure in order not to lose its current upside momentum.
