Wile the majority of the United States was distracted by Sunday's Super Bowl, the US president stated new tariffs on steel and aluminum would be announced Monday.
In other words, the game remains the same, reflected by continued strong buying in precious metals.
Meanwhile, the Grains sector was quietly lower to start a week that includes the next round of USDA's monthly WASDE nonsense.
Morning Summary: Now that the National Football League’s Super Bowl has been played – with congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles – the United States can start to focus its attention on things that matter. But before that can happen there is one more piece of business likely to take place: An Executive Order from the US president making the New Jersey Generals world champions. (I’m sure there are some in the audience too young to know who the New Jersey Generals are and why it matters. Have fun Googling it.) As expected, the US president used the distraction of the Super Bowl to say a new 25% tariff on “all steel and aluminum imports into the United State” would be announced Monday. In response, China’s promised 15% tariffs on US products including “LNG, coal, and agricultural equipment” are set to be imposed Monday as well. It’s going to be a fun week[i]. Markets are not showing much reaction early Monday morning with the US dollar index ($DXY) posting a small gain and US stock index futures in the green. However, we can see the ripple effect of continued trade troubles in precious metals where gold (GCJ25) rallied as much as $42.10 while silver (SIH25) gained as much as 32.7 cents, with both markets near session highs at this writing.
