· The dollar edged higher against a basket of currencies on Friday, ending its strongest week in six months, as traders piled into the greenback in a safe-haven move on worries about a weakening global economy.
The euro was on track for its biggest weekly drop in four months as data showed an economic slowdown in Europe was spreading, pulling government bond yields lower.
With China out for holidays this week, market volatility has fallen. Investors have taken stock of the opening weeks of the year, and most of the consensus trades at the end of 2018 incurred losses.
Going into 2019, the dollar was expected to weaken, especially against the euro and the yen. But so far, it has gained more than a percent against the euro and been flat against the Japanese currency.
An index that tracks the greenback versus the euro, yen, sterling and three other currencies was up 0.13 percent at 96.634.
On the week, the ICE dollar index was up 1.1 percent, its biggest weekly increase since a 1.28 percent jump in the week of Aug. 10,2018.
The euro was down 0.13 percent at $1.13230 for a weekly decline of 1.1 percent, which was its biggest weekly fall since late September.
· U.S. government debt yields fell on Friday as global growth fears continued to weight on equity markets and buoy safe-haven assets.
At around 11:30 a.m. ET, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to price, was lower at around2.627 percent, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was also lower at 2.98 percent.
· U.S. negotiators are preparing to press China next week on longstanding demands that it reform how it treats American companies’ intellectual property in order to seal a trade deal that could prevent tariffs from rising on Chinese imports.
A new round of trade talks begins in Beijing on Monday, after the most recent set of negotiations concluded in Washington last week without a deal and with the top U.S. negotiator declaring that a lot more work needed to be done.
China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that the two countries would have a “further deep discussion on issues of mutual concern” on the basis of what they talked about at the last round of talks in Washington. It gave no details.
· China’s retailer and catering enterprises earned over 1 trillion yuan ($148.3 billion) during the Lunar New Year holiday, defying an economic slump to rise 8.5 percent from last year, the country’s commerce ministry said late on Sunday.
· Britain and Switzerland will sign an agreement on Monday to continue trading on preferential terms after Brexit, the British trade department said, protecting a trade relationship worth 32 billion pounds.
· The British parliament is set to hold a debate on Brexit on Feb. 14 but this is not a re-run of a vote last month on whether to approve the exit deal Prime Minister Theresa May’s negotiated with the European Union.
May is seeking changes to her deal with Brussels after it was rejected by a record majority in parliament on Jan. 15. She has said she wants to bring a revised deal back to parliament for a vote “as soon as possible” but has not yet set a date for doing so.
She has promised that, if she has not brought her deal back for a so-called “meaningful vote” by Feb. 13, lawmakers will get to debate Brexit on Feb. 14.
· Britain should be ready to use military force to support its global interests after Brexit, defence minister Gavin Williamson will say on Monday, adding that the boundaries between peace and war are becoming blurred.
Williamson will outline plans to send its new aircraft carrier to the Pacific, invest in offensive cyber capabilities and adopt a harder military stance after Brexit than it has done in recent years.
“We can build new alliances, rekindle old ones and most importantly make it clear that we are the country that will act when required. And, a nation that people can turn to when the world needs leadership,” Williamson will say.
· Benchmark oil prices posted a weekly loss after a choppy day of trading on Friday, pulled down by worries about a global economic slowdown.
OPEC-led supply cuts and U.S. sanctions against Venezuela provided crude with some support.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures stood ended Friday's session 8 cents higher at $52.72 per barrel, ending the week down 4.6 percent, their steepest weekly loss this year.
International Brent crude futures had erased earlier losses around 2:30 p.m. ET, gaining 51 cents to $62.14 per barrel. On the week, they are set for a loss of about 1 percent.
· Oil exporters have not fully recovered from the dramatic oil price shock of 2014, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Saturday, and she cautioned against spending money on "white elephant projects."
"With revenues down, fiscal deficits are only slowly declining, despite significant reforms on both the spending and revenue sides, including the introduction of VAT and excise taxes," Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, told a conference in Dubai.
"This has led to a sharp increase in public debt, from 13 percent of GDP in 2013 to 33 percent in 2018."
Reference: CNBC, Reuters
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