Market Snapshot – Signs of Stability But Nothing Concrete yet

Markets Still Unstable

The risk aversion theme continues to dominate the markets which has led to the gold prices moving higher and the stock markets moving lower. But there are early signs of stability emerging amidst all this confusion and uncertainty and the traders and investors would hope that this would lead to some sort of stabilisation and improvement in the sentiment in the short term. The Asian stock markets managed to ride the sentiment and closed only marginally lower while the European stock markets were not that lucky as the FTSE moved lower despite the strong manufacturing production data which lifted the pound. The DAX also suffered losses which continued its bearish streak and with the euro continuing to remain stable and strong, it is likely to lead to concern among some of the corporates who would then be looking at lower numbers. This is one of the reasons for the fall in the European stock markets over the last few sessions.

Gold Continues to Rise

The gold prices continued to move higher on the back of risk off sentiment in the markets though the tension between North Korea and the US began to subside and there are signs of recovery in the stock markets which should in turn influence the gold prices as the funds get pulled out of gold and invested into the stock markets as the investor sentiment improves. But so far, there are no complete signals of a reversal as yet and the gold prices have since rocketed higher through the 1280 region and continue to trade strongly as of this writing.