What to Focus On in this Week's Markets

• This will be a busy week for markets, both financial and commodities, given global tensions and the next to last US FOMC meeting of 2023. 
• The October jobs data will shine a light, theoretically, on the red-hot US labor market while Apple's quarterly earnings will be a read on consumer spending. 
• The end of the month will likely see all three major US stock indexes close lower, but not breaking out of long-term uptrends. 

This is going to be a busy week for global markets, with major events occurring nearly everywhere we look. As I talked about recently, the situation in the Middle East is going to keep investors interested in the safe haven markets of gold and crude oil, with the former continuing to show strength while the latter has fizzled of late. Since October 7, when Palestinian militants attacked Israel, December gold (GCZ23) has gained nearly 9% while the spot-month WTI crude oil contract (CLZ23) is sitting 0.5% higher. Meanwhile, investment traders have more than doubled their net-long futures position in gold and reduced their net-long futures position in WTI by 14% according to last Friday's CFTC Commitments of Traders report (legacy, futures only).