What Escalating U.S.-China Tensions Mean for Markets

What’s in Today’s Report:

  • What Escalating U.S.-China Tensions Mean for Markets
  • What’s the Fed’s Endgame With Rates?
  • How Low Could Oil Prices Go?

Stock futures are lower and the 10-year yield fell to a 4-month low overnight amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and China over Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

Speaker Pelosi is scheduled to land in Taiwan later this morning despite repeated and stern warnings from China about a potential military response to the visit and the elevated tensions are resulting in equity market weakness and rising demand for safe havens assets such as Treasuries.

Looking beyond geopolitics, there are a few other potential catalysts to watch today including two economic reports: Motor Vehicle Sales (E: 13.5M) and JOLTS (11.0M), as well as two Fed officials scheduled to speak: Evans (9:00 a.m. ET) and Bullard (6:45 p.m. ET).

Earnings season also continues today with results from CAT ($3.00), JBLU (-$0.11), MAR ($1.59), TSEM ($0.52), AMD ($1.03), PYPL ($0.85), and SBUX ($0.77).

Bottom line, markets are trading with a risk-off tone due to the U.S.-China tensions surrounding Taiwan however a meaningful escalation including military action between the U.S. and China remains very unlikely, and as such the pressure on equities is not expected to deepen or last very long and market focus is likely to turn back to Fed policy later in the week as the July jobs report is due out on Friday.