The RBA unexpectedly announced a 50 basis points increase in the cash rate while markets had been expecting a hike of 25 basis points
Wall Street stocks finished slightly higher overnight, with investors staying cautious ahead of the upcoming ECB meeting and the US inflation report due later in the week. The S&P 500 gained 0.3%, now trading 13.5% below an all-time peak seen in early-January. The Dow Jones edged up less than 0.1% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 0.4%. In individual stocks, Twitter dipped 1.5% to lose nearly 1% in after-hours trading after Tesla XEO Elon Musk threatened to walk away from his $44bn takeover of Twitter, saying Twitter was refusing to hand over data about possible fake accounts.
Asian stock markets were mixed-to-lower on Tuesday after the RBA unexpectedly announced a 50 basis points increase in the cash rate while markets had been expecting a hike of 25 basis points. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 1.53% following the decision while the AUDUSD pair rallied briefly to come back under pressure following a knee-jerk bullish reaction, last trading below 0.7200. In China, the Shanghai Composite gained 0.17% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped 0.56%.
In Europe, equities opened lower today, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 index dropping 0.5% in early deals as investors are gearing up for key events unclidung the ECB meeting and the US inflation data due later this week. Elsewhere, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson narrowly survived a vote of confidence triggered by his own lawmakers. On the data front, Eurozone’s Sentix investor confidence improved to -15.8 in June versus -20.0 expected.
In curencies, the dollar is back on the offensive across the market as traders prefer to buy the safe-haven US curency ahead of the above-mentioned events. The USD index climbed back above the 102.00 figure to extend the ascent towards the 102.83 zone before retreating marginally. EURUSD has been losing ground for the third day in a row, trading below 1.0700 on Tuesday after failure to overcome the 1.0760 barrier. The path of least resistance remains to the downside ahead of the ECB meeting.
