Weekly Market Recap – August 9th, 2019

In the Markets

Equity markets continued their slide down, albeit at a much slower pace than the week prior. The NASDAQ fell 0.9%, the Dow Jones slipped 0.7%, and the S&P 500 fell 0.5%. On Monday, the Yuan, China’s currency, dropped to a low since 2008, falling to weaker than 7 Yuan to the USD for the 3rd consecutive trading day. This drew accusations from Washington of currency manipulation, and contributed to the major indices’ biggest loss of the week. The S&P 500 lost 2.98% in Monday’s session, spending the rest of the week clawing away at that decline to return to almost flat.

The market’s rebound from Monday’s drop was seen in-part as a response to Chinese pushback against the “currency manipulator” moniker. The Chinese central bank’s vice-governor and head of the state’s Administration of Foreign Exchange Pan Gongsheng published an article on Monday stating that China “will not engage in a competitive devaluation and won’t use the exchange rate as a tool to handle international trade disputes” attributing Monday’s Yuan drop to external economic factors. In other international news, the new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that the UK must be ready to leave the EU by the October 31st deadline, whether a deal is reached with the EU or not.

Oil products market their second straight weekly decline, and third in the last four weeks. WTI Crude dropped 2.08%, faring better than its Brent counterpart, which fell 5.43% on the week. Gasoline fell 6.03% and heating oil lowered 4.35%. Natural gas posted its 4th losing week in a row, although the pace of losses lessened, as the energy commodity fell just 0.09% on the week.

Precious metals fared well amidst interest rate cuts from central banks around the globe, as well as the aforementioned weak Yuan. Gold gained 3.5% and silver climbed 4.06%. Platinum and palladium did not perform quite as well, but still managed 1.9% and 0.76% gains respectively. Copper also managed to post gains, up 1.01%.

Soybeans, Corn, and Wheat all rebounded from a recent string of losses. Corn gained 2.69%, soybeans advanced 2.67%, and wheat rose 1.88%. Sugar and coffee both posted losses on the week, with sugar down 1.33% and coffee losing 0.87%. Milk on the other hand climbed 1.85% on the week. Lean hogs rebounded slightly from the week prior’s steep decline with a 3.61% gain.

World Cup Trading Championships

Durai Ramasamy held onto first amid another tumultuous week in the markets, finishing with a net return of 214.5%. Holger Groechel held onto the second place position with a net return of 179%, while Takumaru Sakakibara returned to the top 5 into third place with a net return of 149.8%, pushing Fabien Fischer and his 114.5% return into fourth place. The top five was rounded out by Eduardo Ramos and his 77% net return.

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.