• The dollar held steady on Friday despite a government report showing slower U.S. first-quarter economic growth, with the currency on track to end its strongest week since November 2016, having gained 1.4 percent.
While Friday extended the week’s gains, the dollar’s move was muted by comparison, last up just 0.1 percent at 91.671 against a basket of six currencies, though still its highest since Jan. 12.
Against the yen, the dollar rose to a top of 109.53 yen on Friday, the highest level since Feb. 8.
The euro, in which speculators held record long positions, fell to $1.205 on Friday, its lowest since Jan. 12.
• The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury hit its highest level in four years this week, putting upward pressure on borrowing costs and shining a spotlight on the Federal Reserve's plans to hike interest rates.
"We can sustain a 3 percent type of interest rate," Mariann Montagne, senior investment analyst at Gradient Investments, told CNBC's "Futures Now" this week. She added that it's a matter of the right level at the right time.
"The rate was 2.95 [percent] back at the end of January into February. We thought then it had run too far, too fast, [and] it came back to about the 2.72 area," said Montagne.
• The latest economic data released by the government on Friday show inflation pressures are rising, and will lead the Federal Reserve to hike rates four times this year, one more than the three moves targeted in March, economists said.
The first-quarter GDP data, also released this morning, showed core personal consumption expenditure price index, at a 2.5% rate in the first quarter, above the Fed’s2% target for headline inflation.
• The leaders of North and South Korea pledged at a historic summit on Friday to work for “complete denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula. However, Trump said he would maintain pressure on Pyongyang through sanctions ahead of his own unprecedented meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
• U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday a meeting with North Korea could happen over the next three to four weeks.
“I think we will have a meeting over the next three or four weeks,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Washington, Michigan. “It’s going be a very important meeting, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plans to invite experts and journalists from the United States and South Korea when the country shuts its nuclear test site in May, Seoul officials said, as U.S. President Trump pressed for total denuclearization ahead of his own unprecedented meeting with Kim.
• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed the inter-Korean summit as good for denuclearization and a “historical step” towards peace and stability in northeast Asia, Abe’s office said on Sunday.
• President Vladimir Putin has told his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in that Russia is ready to facilitate cooperation between North and South Korea, the Kremlin said on Sunday.
In a telephone call with Moon, Putin said Russia was ready to help with trilateral infrastructure and energy projects on the Korean peninsula.
• U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that he told Kim Jong Un that the North Korea leader would have to agree to take “irreversible” steps toward shutting its nuclear weapons program in any deal with U.S. President Donald Trump.
• U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to shut down the federal government in September if Congress did not provide more funding to build a wall on the border with Mexico.
“That wall has started, we have 1.6 billion (dollars),” Trump said at a campaign rally in Washington, Michigan.
“We come up again on September 28th and if we don’t get border security we will have no choice, we will close down the country because we need border security.”
• Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Saturday a mounting trade spat between the United States and China was one of the most pressing worries for Southeast Asian nations as their leaders echoed the concern over rising protectionism.
• The Trump administration on Friday labeled 36 countries as inadequately protecting U.S. intellectual property rights, keeping China on a priority watch list and adding Canada over concerns about its border controls and pharmaceutical practices.
• China is looking to dazzle a visiting U.S. trade delegation this week, arranging a session with President Xi Jinping and planning pledges to cut tariffs and ease regulations. It will likely take more than that to impress the visiting Americans and head off a looming trade war.
It will be a high-stakes meeting, starting Thursday. U.S.-China economic relations have sunk to their lowest point in decades with the U.S., angry over alleged Chinese pressure on U.S. firms to transfer technology to Chinese partners and other misdeeds, threatening tariffs on $150 billion in Chinese goods and prohibitions on Chinese purchase of U.S. technology.
• Britain, France and Germany have agreed that the nuclear deal that U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap remains the best way of stopping Tehran getting nuclear weapons, British Prime Minister Theresa May’s office said on Sunday.
• The latest round of U.S. sanctions against Moscow will limit scope for rate cuts in Russia as well as room for economic recovery, a Reuters monthly poll of 23analysts and economists suggested.
• Oil prices edged lower on Friday, although Brent still gained for a third straight week amid supply concerns should the United States reimpose sanctions on Iran.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 fell 10 cents, or 0.1 percent, to settle at $74.64 a barrel. This month, the global benchmark hit highs above $75, a level last seen in late2014.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures fell 9 cents to settle at $68.10 a barrel, also a 0.1 percent loss.
• U.S. President Donald Trump will decide by May 12 whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran that were lifted as part of an agreement with six other world powers over Tehran’s nuclear program. The renewed sanctions would likely dampen Iranian oil exports, disrupting global oil supply.
Reference: Reuters, Market Watch, Wall Street Journal