The oil market on Wednesday saw an increase in volatility. Oil dropped in the second half of the day to $45.9 per barrel of Brent; a minimum since the beginning of May. Later on, however, support for the price came from US stats. According to the EIA, oil reserves fell by 2.342 million barrels for the week (expected 2.1 million barrel fall). As a result, oil prices quickly mobilised to $47.5, finishing the day at $47.1. The price on Thursday morning has been rising steadily towards yesterday’s maximum, reaching $47.4.
The US indices yesterday continued to update their all-time maximums and, due to this, the Asian stock markets saw a rise. The Nikkei 225 rose by 0.5%. The ASX Australia was up 0.3%. The Shanghai Composite increased 0.8%, and the Hang Seng was up by 0.7%. Futures for the S&P 500 were trading at 2167; close to the closing level of the previous trading day.
The service trading volume in China for the first 5 months of 2016 totaled 2.08 trillion yuan; a YoY increase of 22.7%. This trading of services amounts to 18.5% of China’s domestic trading (previous: 15.3%). The rise in trading reaching almost 20% was in particular in the exports of computer (20.4%) and technical (23.9%) services, in addition to financial, advertising and informational services. Concurrently, there was an impressive rise in imports: 31.9%. The main factor for this growth was tourism: rising from 53.4% to 880.3 billion yuan for the first 5 months of this year. Taking June’s data into account, the service trading volume for the first half of 2016 is around 2.5 trillion yuan.
The USD was trading down against the yuan this morning at 6.6720 (-0.0058 or -0.09%).
The EUR/USD was trading in no particular direction on Wednesday: dropping to 1.0980 and rising to 1.1030, closing the say above the opening price at around 1.1015. Thursday morning has seen the pair rise towards 1.1030. The much-awaited event of the day is the ECB interest rate meeting. Retail sales will also be coming out of the UK and initial unemployment benefit applications will be coming out of the US.