Morning Briefing: Equities higher on Fed, oil slips on OPEC cut concern

Equities higher on Fed, oil slips on OPEC cut concern
Equity markets are largely higher Wednesday as a strong lead from Wall Street combined with comments made by Fed chair Janet Yellen boosted sentiment.

Oil prices have eased over concern on the longevity of the OPEC production cuts which are only a month old. Rising US production adds to the fears.

Asian markets closed higher with the notable exception of Shanghai. Tokyo’s Nikkei managed to shake off a drop in Toshiba stock over a large loss on its US nuclear business and expectation of the sale of its chip unit.

European indexes are trending higher with banking stocks particularly strong following the hawkish tone of Janet Yellen’s speech which has boosted expectation of a US interest rate rise next month.

Wall Street and Toronto are expected to open slightly higher. It’s the second day of the Fed chair’s testimony to the Senate. US consumer prices and advance retail sales data is due.
 

	Latest	1 month ago	1 year ago
North America (previous session)
US Dow Jones	20,504.41 (+0.45 per cent)	+3.11 per cent	+28.36 per cent
TSX Composite	15,786.03 (+0.19 per cent)	+1.86 per cent	+27.50 per cent
Europe (at 5.00am ET)
UK FTSE	7,303.04 (+0.47 per cent)	-0.47 per cent	+25.39 per cent
German DAX	11,821.95 (+0.43 per cent)	+1.66 per cent	+28.40 per cent
Asia (at close)
China CSI 300	3,421.71 (-0.41 per cent)	+3.07 per cent	+16.12 per cent
Japan Nikkei	19,437.98 (+1.03 per cent)	+0.78 per cent	+21.32 per cent
Other Data (at 5.00am ET)
Oil (Brent)	Oil (WTI)	Gold	Can. Dollar
55.85 (-0.21 per cent)	52.99 (-0.39 per cent)	1226.40 (+0.08 per cent)	U$0.7645
			Aus. Dollar
			U$0.7676

Apple finance boss says US border tax would be damaging
The CFO of Apple told an audience of investors Tuesday that a US border tax would not be a good thing for the country.

As exporters in Canada and Mexico remain concerned that President Trump may slap a 20 per cent tax on imports, Luca Maestri warned that the move would not be positive and would “burden the consumer and the dollar would appreciate versus where it is today, which is already too strong.”

A large proportion of Apple products are made outside the US and would be heavily impacted by a border tax.