By IFCMarkets

On Thursday the US stocks slightly declined in line with the US dollar index. The GDP growth in the 3rd quarter was less than expected which did not particularly disappoint investors. The probability of the Fed rate hike on its next meeting on December 16 increased on Wednesday from 43% to 50%. The week reports from hi-tech companies weighed on the US stock market: NXP Semiconductors (-19,7%), GoPro (-15,2%) and F5 Networks (-9,3%). The trade volume on the US exchanges was in line with the average for 20 trading days at 7bln stocks. Today in the morning the futures on the U.S. indices are in the black as the aggregate corporate data was not weak at all. The quarterly earnings of 60% of the S&P 500 index components have been released. Their gross earnings contracted by 1.7% only while on October 1 it was estimated to contract by 4.2%. What is more, the additional positive came from the news that pharmaceutical Pfizer (-1,9%) is planning to acquire the botox producer Allergan. On such a news S&P healthcare sector index climbed 0.4%. The financial performance of LinkedIn social network was better than expected which pushed its stocks up by 12.4%. The US dollar index is slightly declining today amid the Bank of Japan meeting results and the yen strengthening. Despite expectations of some investors, the Bank of Japan decided not to expand the bond buying programme. Today at 13:00 CET the September personal income and spending will be released, the outlook is negative. At 15:00 СЕТ the final University of Michigan CPI for October will be released. Some investors expect it to be revised up. Today at 13:30 CET the Canada’s GDP for August will come out. It is expected to grow which can make the Canadian dollar stronger. In such a case its chart will reflect the downtrend.

The European stock indices show moderate growth after the fall during the previous session. In the morning the considerably week macroeconomic data were released. The September retail sales in Germany were less than forecasted. Nevertheless, investors reacted more on the increase in carmaker Renault revenue by 9.4% in the 3rd quarter. This pushed its stocks up by 5.8% and made the stocks of other carmakers cost more. The Telecom Italia stocks edged 3% up due to the additional news on their buyback and the rise in the Illiad’s share to 15%. Today at 11:00 CET the Eurozone inflation for October and September unemployment will come out. In our opinion, the outlook for euro is positive.

Nikkei index hit a 2-month high today but closed with little change from the previous closing price. In October its increase was record high in 2.5 years amounting to 9.7%. To conform more to the conditions of the recently signed Trans-Pacific trade Partnership, the Japanese government is planning to raise budget spending by 3trn yens. The funds will be allocated to the Japanese farmers and other sectors that can suffer from the increased competitiveness. Today the weak Japan’s real estate market data were released which partly cooled the stock market down.

Wheat prices today continued extending gains after the blue chip Australian CBH Group forecasted the export from Western Australia to contract by 500 thousand tonnes to 13mln tonnes in season 2015/16. This is 18% less than the September outlook from ABARES state bureau.

The soy prices were slightly up. The China National Grain and Oils Information Centre expects its imports to China to increase by 18% in the 4th quarter from the last year’s 22mln tonnes. The market reaction is moderate as the expected import is lower than the 3rd quarter reading at 24.54mln tonnes. The China’s soy purchases in 2015 will be in line with the last year’s volume of 78.36mln tonnes as yet.

Market Analysis provided by IFCMarkets