After Abe’s comment this was an awesome day for the Nikkei and laid the ground for Asia markets combined. A 4% rally for Japan with a 1.5% improvement for the Shanghai whilst Hang Seng made just a marginal improvement. The Upper House elections saw Japan’s Abe party secure a landslide victory in the Sunday election which promised Abenomics be successfully implemented. The JPY however, did suffer from Fridays close from 100.40 to the current 102 level.
Europe performed well on the back of a meaningful Asian session which followed the huge payrolls surprise on Friday. All core indices closed between 1.5 – 2% higher today with significant bounces coming from Italian banking sector together with raw material stocks. Dealers were stacked with comments that the economies of the world had finally turned the corner to expecting central bank QE measures to cease in the not too distant future. Finally, a quiet day for UK politics with just the announcement that David Cameron will be replaced Wednesday with Theresa May. British property companies were major advances today with gains seen of around 6%.
US stocks continued the Monday session as they closed Fridays flurry. S+P closed at all time highs and dealers were very confident of more to come! Many official and unofficial speakers have commented recently so the Fed’s Beige Book (due to release Wednesday) will be the support or breaker of this current rally. The DXY has also taken the rally to heart closing this evening up 0.3% to close at 96.59.
As stocks rallied so bonds have sold off; well, that is for the US market! US curve 2/10 steepened today as sellers hit the market and moving into cash and/or equities. The curve lost 2bp with 10’s closing at 1.43% put 2/10 at +78bp. German Bunds also lost ground but not as much and so the US/Germany spread tightened 2bp to close +160bp. Italy 10yr closed 1.20% (+1bp), Greece 7.66% (-9bp), Turkey 8.92% (-3bp), Portugal 3.08% (+3bp) and UK gilts at 0.75% (+2bp).