The positive impact of Friday's stellar nonfarm payrolls report continues to work its way through the markets. Asia Pacific indices staged a big catch up rally led by the Nikkei rallying 4.0% and Australian stocks up 2.0%. These markets were also boosted by a positive response with Japanese PM Abe's party scoring a big upper house win enabling him to push through more reforms while Australia PM Turnbull's Conservative coalition eked out a narrow victory in a close race.
US index futures are up 0.2% on follow-through from Friday as the S&P 500 continues to challenge its all-time high.. European indices are also climbing with the Dax up 1.0% and the FTSE up 0.5%. Italy's FTSE MIB is down 0.6% with banks giving back some of Friday's bounce with bail-ins expected to be one of several topics of discussion at today's Eurogroup finance ministers meeting.
The Farnborough Air Show is underway. Order flow this year has been light so far with orders mainly coming for single aisle Boeing (NYSE:BA) 737s and Airbus (PA:AIR) A320s from airlines in China and India, with one A350 order being rumoured. Bombardier's ability to build on its big CSeries wins with Air Canada (TO:AC) and Delta (NYSE:DAL) earlier this year could be a topic of discussion, it's hard to say if it's too early to see more orders or not. Orders for smaller business jets and turboprops often come later in the show so Bombardier and Embraer (NYSE:ERJ) may be in the news as well over the next few days.
In currency action today GBP is trading higher, particularly against JPY after Angela Leadsom dropped out of the race for Conservative leader paving the way for Theresa May, as the last contender standing, to become the next PM of the UK. This news has been seen as a positive for the pound as it reduces some of the political uncertainty and enables the government to start preparing for Brexit and other trade negotiations (hints were dropped over the weekend UK may be looking for deal with the US and Canada plus China to start).
CAD is under pressure from a 1.4% drop in oil prices with WTI breaking $45.00 earlier today. Returning oil sands production running into pipeline constraints has been blamed for the decline but this seems like an empty excuse to me as traders have known production was going to come back for weeks. US drill rigs were up again Friday but a seasonal rebound happens nearly every summer and the overall level of exploration remains low.
It's a light day for economic news but we do get a couple of Fed speakers. Regional presidents George and Mester have been associated with the hawkish camp so it will be interesting to see their reaction to the nonfarm payrolls report. After the close, Alcoa (NYSE:AA) kicks off earnings season.