A rare public spat between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve confused the markets; the headlines related to Brexit and vaccine progress also affected the market mood.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s demand for 580 billion dollars from the Federal Reserve referring to it as unused funds were countered by the bank saying that the fund is used as an emergency lending facility.
The speeches from Raphael Bostic, President of the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve and Robert Kaplan of the Dallas Fed, are important as the spat with Mnuchin and next monetary policy action are eyed by traders.
The new daily high of 185,000 infections on Thursday recorded in the US worries markets even when Pfitzer and BioNTech are fast-tracking their vaccine development efforts.
Pound traders are watching Brexit developments as France and Belgium reportedly asked the EU to increase the preparations for a no-deal Brexit. Face-to-face negotiations have been suspended after one person involved in the talks tested positive for the coronavirus. Many of the EU members expect a fruitful deal soon, and Brussels’ chief negotiator Michel Barnier will soon brief the member countries.
UK Retail sales exceeded expectations with a 1.2 Percent growth in October, a period just before the start of the second nationwide lockdown.
In the US election results continue to favour the President-elect Joe Biden, after Georgia completed a manual recount. Trump’s attempts to challenge the results have not met any success, to date.
The modest strength in the oil prices helped the CAD and dragged USD/CAD below 1.3100, ahead of Canada’s Retail Sales report, which is expected to show a minor increase in September.
Bitcoin regained the 18.000 dollars level after a period of consolidation while the second most popular crypto, Ethereum trades around 500 dollars.
