Labo(u)r Day

Risk is still under pressure today. Oil futures are down by 1%; light crude now $39.20, Brent $42.14.

Nasdaq futures fell on the open, currently down over 1% on the day.

The main story overnight was China's trade data. Exports are up 9.5% YoY, beating analyst expectations of a 7.1% expansion. Imports continue to fall, down 2.1% YoY, missing analyst expectations of a 0.1% increase.Interestingly, trade with the EU kept falling. Exports to the EU and imports from the EU continued to decline.  

 It tells you that demand for Chinese merchandise goods went up.

Where? The USA & ASEAN but not the EU, which declined.

So we can say that recovery in the US is getting stronger, hence demand for goods higher. pic.twitter.com/6R5lel7lsn— Trinh (@Trinhnomics) September 7, 2020 

ING's take;

China’s exports grew faster in August at 9.5%YoY than a month ago (7.2%YoY). One reason for this is because last year's base was very low.

But even with such helpful base effects, not every export item experienced faster growth. Growth was mainly concentrated in integrated circuits, auto-data processors and textiles, smartphones and household appliances. This is quite interesting because, with the technology war between China and the US, one would have expected China’s exports of technology-related items to have experienced slower growth or even contraction. Clearly, China still has some trade partners that are willing to import Chinese technology. We will need to monitor this closely to see if it changes in the months ahead.

Importing fewer goods

in contrast to the export side, China's imports fell 2.1%YoY in August from -1.4%YoY in July.

Most of the fall was seen in imports of energy and integrated circuits. We believe that the US technology war has increased the difficulty for China of importing more advanced semiconductors. In turn, this could affect exports of technological products and services in the coming months.

We see more hurdles looming for China's export growth.

Not much on the calendar today, Germany's industrial production figure at 7AM BST the only data point of vague interest.

I'll put my notes for this week into a better format and post that later today. Right, onto EURUSD. I was going to write my thoughts out, but decided to try a video instead.

Summary: 1.19 area is key for managing my risk.Still think it will go lower and see no reason to be long Euro heading into ECB on the 10th.