It’s all green screens out there early on as the relief rally gathered steam in the overnight.
Bottom line: Hurricane Irma wasn’t as catastrophic as feared and North Korea decided maybe it wasn’t a fantastic idea to launch another missile ahead of a new sanctions vote in the Security Council where it still enjoys the support of Moscow and Beijing.
And so, it was time to dump havens in favor of risk. The Bloomberg Dollar Index rose for the first time in eight days, snapping its longest losing streak in more than six years, while the yen was under pressure:
The combination of a weaker yen and no missiles flying overhead catalyzed a solid rally in Japanese equities – the Nikkei had its best day since late June:
South Korean shares were off their highs by the close but still managed a decent day. The index has recovered a bit after a going on a 5-day losing streak following the North’s latest nuclear test:
Investors fled gold, which rose to a fresh one-year high last week. “Gold very rarely gaps, but for a second successive Monday, it opened outside the previous session’s trading range,” Eddie van Der Walt writes for Bloomberg this morning. “What’s even rarer for gold is for a gap to stay open more than a full trading session, as it did last week,” he continues, adding that “that’s only happened four times this decade, and just once on the way down.”
The MSCI Asia Pacific rose 0.6% and is sitting comfortably at its highest level since the eve of the crisis:
