Unum Market Commentary: Global Equities Mixed As Traders Assess

Global equities got off to a weaker start this week as traders assessed the impact of further tariffs as well as a slew of economic data and potentially market-moving events for the week ahead. This morning we saw the release of the Bank of Japan Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes while tomorrow the US Federal Reserve's Interest Rate Announcement is made known where traders largely expect the committee to raise the lending rate by 25bps. On Thursday, Euro-Area business confidence figures is expected to be released while US Personal Spending is due on Friday at 8:30am New York time. In Europe, equities were weaker, with the DAX, FTSE100 and CAC40 all lower by 0.64%, 0.42% and 0.33% respectively while major indices in the US were mostly lower between 0.35% and 0.70% on average while the Nasdaq managed to get back into the green with a 0.08% gain. This morning in Asia, markets are flat to down, with the Hang Seng being the biggest drag (-1.62%).

JSE Major Sectors

Resources 10 +0.30%
Industrial 25 +0.99%
Financial 15 +2.54%

________________________________________
US Dollar Futures (DXY) - Technical View by Lester Davids

The price has found support 93.42, a level that has held over the past four months. The medium term setup is bearish, with a head and shoulder top developing while the near term price action signals higher levels as the right shoulder of the technical formation develops.

US Dollar Index Futures (Daily Chart)



________________________________________
In currencies, the South African Rand trades as follows:

USDZAR -0.03% to 14.37
GBPZAR -0.12% to 18.83
EURZAR -0.07% to 16.87

Gold trades at $1202
Platinum at $832
Brent Crude Oil at $80.69

International Markets

This morning, Asian equities are as follows:

Nikkei 225 (+0.07%)
Hang Seng (-1.62%)
Shanghai Composite (-0.83%)

Latam Markets closed as follows:

Merval 25 (-3.39%)
Bovespa (-1.84%)
INMEX (-0.14%)
________________________________________
Company News

ArcelorMittal South Africa Limited - Appointment Of Chief Financial Officer And Executive Director

In compliance with paragraph 3.59(a) of the Listings Requirements of the JSE Limited, shareholders are advised that after following an appropriate recruitment process.
The Board of Directors (Board) has approved the appointment of Mr Avinash Desmond Maharaj (Desmond) as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Executive Director of the Board with effect from 1 October 2018.

Mr Maharaj has a Master’s degree in Finance and is a qualified Chartered Accountant registered with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. He has a 22-year career with 17 years at a senior executive level in Finance and General Management level.

Mr Gerhard van Zyl, who acted as Acting CFO pending the appointment of a permanent CFO, will accordingly step down as Acting CFO.

The Board congratulates Mr Maharaj on his appointment and looks forward to his contribution.
________________________________________

Amazon Inc - The Most Important Stock In The World? - Technical View by Lester Davids

The contribution of technology behemoth Amazon Inc to US stock market performance cannot be understated. From being the second company (behind Apple) to reach 1 trillion US Dollars in market value and being a feature across feature across many active and passive funds, the share has become nearly a proxy for US stock market resilience. Today I'm having a brief look at the short term technical position for the share and how it may influence near term performance for US Stocks.

The price has performed strongly year-to-date, appreciating by 64%. Recently the share has breached it's upward trend line that has been in place since October 2017 and has also breached support on it's RSI technical indicator which is starting to turn lower and trending toward the short term bearish zone.



When Amazon is overlayed versus the S&P 500 we see the a strong correlation in performance over the short term.




Bottom Line: With the upward trend line having been breached and the RSI pointing toward the bearish "zone", Amazon under-performance may filter through to the broader S&P 500 index.

________________________________________

Aus miners:
BHP Billiton (+0.86%)
Rio Tinto (+0.97%)
S32 (+1.56%)

FANGs
Facebook (+1.52%)
Amazon (+1.01%)
Netflix (+2.33%)
Google (+0.63%)

FTSE Miners:
Anglo American plc (-1.40%)
BHP Billiton plc (-0.41%)
Glencore plc (-2.02%)

Alibaba Holdings (+0.89%)
Tencent Holdings (-1.97%)

Share Link: bit.ly/JoinUnum

________________________________________
The Unum Capital Trading Desk

Please feel free to contact the Unum Trading desk for any trading related queries :
Tel: 011 384 2929