•The U.S. dollar slipped on Monday as concerns about a prolonged government shutdown and sharply lower equity markets reduced demand for the greenback.
The dollar index against a basket of six other major currencies dipped 0.46 percent to 96.511. It has fallen from a one-and-a-half-year high of 97.711 on Dec. 14.
Trading volumes were thin on Monday with Japan closed and major global markets preparing to shut for the Christmas holiday on Tuesday.
• President Donald Trump blasted the Federal Reserve on Monday, describing it as the “only problem” for the U.S. economy, as top officials convened to discuss a growing rout in stock markets caused in part by the president’s attacks on the central bank.
Stocks fell again on Monday amid concern about slowing economic growth, the government shutdown
• President Donald Trump and top Democrats in Congress sparred over the partial shutdown of the U.S. government on Monday, with no sign of tangible efforts to reopen agencies closed by a political impasse over Trump’s demand for border wall funds.
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Each side has blamed the other for the shutdown, with no sign of renewed negotiations between lawmakers on Capitol Hill or between lawmakers and the White House.
On Sunday, a top Trump aide said the shutdown could continue to Jan.
• The Federal Reserve is finished raising U.S. interest rates.
That is the message emerging from the interest rate futures market as Monday’s full-blown flight from risk assets drove traders to price out nearly any prospect of further rate increases from the Fed, which raised rates again only last week.
Rate futures last week for the first time began pricing the possibility of the Fed reversing course on its rate hike regime starting in 2020.
In conjunction with the rate rise, Fed officials released their individual forecasts for the level at which the federal funds rate will end 2019, with the median projection among the 17policy makers targeting two more rate increases next year, to a range of 2.75 percent 3 percent.
• China’s soybean imports from the United States plunged to zero in November, marking the first time since the trade war between the world’s two largest economies started that China, the world’s largest soybean buyer, has imported no U.S. supplies.
Instead, China has leaned on Brazilian imports to replace the U.S. cargoes, customs data showed on Monday.
China brought in 5.07 million tonnes of soybeans from Brazil in November, up more than 80 percent from 2.76 million tonnes a year ago, data from the General Administration of Customs showed.
• U.S. crude plunged nearly 7 percent on Monday, hitting its lowest levels in a year and half, as the oil market fell in tandem with equities amid deepening turmoil in Washington DC.
U.S. crude futures ended Monday's session down $3.06, or 6.7 percent, at $42.53, the lowest closing price since June 21, 2017. At the session low, WTI came within about 30 cents of U.S. crude's 2017 low at $42.05.
Brent crude futures fell 6.2 percent, or $3.35, to $50.47 a barrel, hitting a 16-month low.
Reference: CNBC, Reuters
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