U.S. markets fell on midterm election results
Another trading session on U.S. markets ended lower on Wednesday while investors focused on midterm elections. Meanwhile Republicans still lead the House of Representatives in terms of the number of votes, but their majority no longer seems so impressive, and the Senate vote may be postponed to a second round in December. Based on this news Wall Street traded lower with Dow Jones declined 1.95% to 32,513.94 points, the S&P 500 declined 2.08% to at 3,748.58 points while the Nasdaq fell 2.48% to 10,353.18 points. The U.S. dollar index DXY which tracks the greenback against a basket of six other main currencies, traded 0.4% higher at 110.549, after losing around 1% so far this week.
With the election outcome still uncertain, investors were turning their attention to October inflation data due out on Thursday, which could shed more light on whether the Fed might soften its aggressive stance on interest rate hikes.
Russia ordered its troops to withdraw from Kherson, the southern Ukrainian city that was the first major city seized in its invasion following the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. At least 100,000 Russian soldiers and most likely the same number of Ukrainian forces have been killed or wounded in the war, US officials reported. In the meantime, new sanctions on Russian oil are set to take effect over the next few months. Starting from December 5, the EU will ban almost all seaborne crude imports from the country. Russia’s equity market rose this Thursday morning as investors weighed cheap valuations and relatively resilient corporate earnings against the impact of economic sanctions and military setbacks in Ukraine. IMOEX gained 1.38% to 2,196 and RTSI gained 1.31% to 1,128. Sberbank and fertilizer producer PhosAgro were among the best performers along with oil and gas company Surgutnegtegaz. Gas Company Novatek dropped 1%. Russian rouble was mostly flat this morning with USDRUB at 61.30 and EURRUB at 61.15. Russian currency has been declining for the last three days as oil prices were lower and government bond index dropped post OFZ auctions. Russian bond yield decreased this morning with a 10-year benchmark local bond yield losing 0.35% to 10.055%. Russian Ministry of Finance sold around $116mln worth of OFZ bonds on local auctions yesterday with investors offering to buy 2.84 times the amount of securities sold.
EU stock markets opened lower Thursday as real estate sector fell 1.7%, with German housing group LEG Immobilien tumbling 6.7% after slightly lowering its annual profit forecast. The DAX index in Germany traded 0.12% lower at 13,661 level, CAC 40 in France fell 0.58% to 6,385 points while the FTSE 100 in the U.K. dropped 0.38% to 7,276 level.
A muted to weaker open for SSA ahead of the US CPI data later today. The space roared on yesterday with KENINT (+1.125) again the pick of the bunch as the country got an additional $210 million from the IMF on top of the $224 million agreed in October. GHANA (-.375) the only underperformer on Wednesday after late supply pushed the spreads wider in the aftermath of annual CPI hitting 40.4%.
The bonds market closed flat across the curve. Average yields on the short & medium tier of the curve closed flat with a slight decline witnessed on the long end. There was demand for the Apr 2037s as it was the best performer. The NTB secondary market closed on a flat note with average yields closing flat across the short to medium tier of the curve. However, yields dropped marginally on the long end of the curve with some demand for the long end. There was a Primary Auction- three tenors offered by the CBN- 91, 182 & 364 days bills.