Asian markets trade higher as pulled up by surge in oil prices. Nikkei is trading up 1.2% at the time of writing. WTI crude oil extended recent rally and took out 51 handle, heading to key medium term resistance at 51.67. Oil was boosted by news that Russia president Vladimir Putin expressed his willingness to back an accord with OPEC to cut productions. Saudi Arabia minister of energy and industry Khalid Al-Falih also said that many other products are also ready to work with OPEC on the issue. Meanwhile, dollar is generally higher on revived expectation of December Fed hike. Fed fund futures are pricing in nearly 70% chance of December hike, comparing to prior day's pricing of around 65%.
Chicago Fed president Charles Evans said that "December could be an appropriate time" to hike rate even though "I don't see any urgency either." He also noted last week's NFP was "actually a pretty good report" with "a little bit" of growth in labor force and wages. But he still sounded cautious that the data was "not really consistent with labor market tightness" and "not anything that's going to lead to inflation moving up above 2 percent". Fed Vice chair Stanley Fischer said that September's decision to keep interest rate unchanged was a "close call". And FOMC members "chose to wait for further evidence of continued progress toward our objective." Meanwhile, there is "little risk of falling behind the curve in the near future."
ECB governing council member Vitas Vasiliauskas said that the central bank forecasts showed inflation will move "closer and closer" to 2% target in the medium term. There have been talks of ECB tapering the quantitative easing program recently. And Vasiliauskas said that "it is very important not to speak about exit." And, "logical exit would be just slow, slow, slow tapering." ECB governing council member Ignazio Visco said that exit of quantitative easing will be "data-dependent" but noted that "there are unintended consequences of maintaining interest rates low for too long."
Released today, Australia NAB business confidence index unchanged at 6 in September while business condition index rose to 8. But NAB noted that "we still expect the economy to slow into 2018 as momentum from commodity exports, housing construction and AUD depreciation is lost." And, "ongoing low inflation combined with a more subdued growth outlook is expected to jolt the RBA into action, cutting the cash rate by 25 basis points two more times in 2017." Also from Australia, home loans dropped -3.0% in August. Elsewhere, Japan current account surplus widened to JPY 1.98T in August. UK BRC retail sales rose 0.4% yoy in September.
Looking ahead, German ZEW economic sentiment is the main focus in European session and is expected to show improvement in the month of October. Canada will release housing starts and US will release labor market condition index later in the day.