Summary:
- Bitcoin has made impressive gains today and is back near its all-time high
- An unexpected build in the DOE inventories threatens the rally in Oil
- Canadian dollar rising with strong housing data
- Snapchat shares tumble on disappointing earnings
- RBNZ rate decision due out at 8PM (GMT)
The Bitcoin price marked a significant increase earlier today following the tweet from Charlie Lee who is the creator of Litecoin and former Coinbase executive. He tweeted that Nick Szabo, the smart contracts pioneer whom the Bitcoin community considers as a figure closest to the Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamato, has publicly expressed his opposition against SegWit2x.
The weekly DOE inventories have shown an unexpected build in the headline reading with a rise of 2.2M against consensus forecasts for a -2.5M print. With a prior reading of -2.4M today’s number is clearly a shock to the upside and given that 4 of the last 5 readings had shown drawdowns a sizable rise could be seen as bearish for the oil price.
Two Canadian data-points on the housing market have just been released with both the housing starts and building permits improving on their prior numbers. Housing starts in October came in at 223k, comfortably beating the 211k consensus forecast whilst the prior reading was revised higher to 219k from 217k previously.
he majority of large US companies have now reported their third results with most announcing impressive results. Snapchat however is an exception, with the social media firm reporting a disappointing set of figures after the market closed last night.
Looking forward the RBNZ rate decision is due out at 8PM (GMT). The NZ dollar hasn’t had good times of late as it’s been afflicted by political turmoil which could stifle economic growth going forward. On the other hand we got upbeat reports on inflation, employment and prices which could incentivize the RBNZ to revise up its macroeconomic projections