Weekly Market Recap – June 8th, 2018
In the Markets
Last week ended with the Charlevoix G7 summit in La Malbaie, Quebec, as Italy, Germany, France, Japan, and the U.S. joined Canada for the 2 day conference. The summit ended with a 28 point joint communique covering a wide range of issues including trade, North Korea’s denuclearization, and Russia’s foreign policy. All seven members did not remain on the communique for long, however, as President Trump tweeted while in route to Singapore that he would instruct U.S. reps to not endorse the agreement. The response came after Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. The sentiment from the Trump administration was that the Canadian tariff announcement was in bad faith with respect to the discussions President Trump had with Trudeau over the weekend.
According to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the U.S.’s sanctions against China’s ZTE, including a $1 billion penalty against the telecom company, will end in a new deal that will bring a change in ZTE’s board of directors and executives. The deal could have positive ripple effects in the ongoing trade negotiations with China.
While this last week was relatively quiet with market-moving news, this coming week has a substantial docket, including the anticipated summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report, as well as the probably 25 basis points interest rate hike to be announced by the Fed.
Silver and gold both posted strong gains in the wake of a weakening dollar, with silver up 1.82% and gold up 0.26%. June futures of the dollar index fell 0.67%, ending the greenback’s bullish streak.
With strike worries surrounding the Escondida mine in Chile, copper soared last week up 6.5%. Oil prices continued to fall, with WTI crude down 0.11%, and Brent crude down 0.55%. Grains had a very bearish weak. Wheat fell 0.62%, corn was down 3.51%, and Soybeans had the worst performance down 5.09% on the week.
All three major indices posted gains, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.8%, the S&P 500 rose 1.6%, and the NASDAQ was up 1.2%.
World Cup Trading Championships
The top three traders, Jan Smolen, Paul Skarp, and Wayne Wan, who have held their positions since May 30th, all showed increases in their net return. Wayne briefly took second place on Tuesday, before finishing in third at 97.75%, up 33.51% on the week. Paul Skarp held on to second place to close the week, up 32.5% on the week to close with a net return of 113.68% on the year. Despite their furious gains, Jan Smolen held onto his lead, gaining 31.78% on the week, and reaching his new high for the year at 198.24%.
Takumaru Sakakibara and Kurt Sakaeda battled back and forth to start the week, but it was a newcomer Craig Fullen who snagged 4th place, finishing the week at 69.3%, with Sakakibara behind him rounding out the top 5 with a net return of 50.74%.
Trading futures and forex involves significant risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. World Cup Championship (WCC ) accounts do not necessarily represent all the trading accounts controlled by a given competitor. WCC competitors may control accounts that produce results substantially different than the results achieved in their WCC accounts. WCC entrants may trade more than one account in the competition.