DXY is getting pounded again.
AUD is up.
Lead boots too.
Gold surged. Oil caput.
Metals mania!
Even gave life to mining dogs.
EM faded.
Junk up.
Yields down.
Stocks paused.
Instead of Trump mania, we got Bessent calm. Bloomberg.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered support for Jerome Powell amid regular attacks from Trump administration officials, saying he sees no reason for the Federal Reserve chair to step down.
More.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he will meet his Chinese counterparts in Stockholm next week for their third round of trade talks aimed at extending a tariff truce and widening the discussions.
“That deal expires on Aug. 12,” Bessent said on Fox Business of the scheduled end of the current trade truce between the world’s two largest economies. “I’m going to be in Stockholm on Monday and Tuesday with my Chinese counterparts and we’ll be working out what is likely an extension then.”
I had expected things to go the other way, with Trump’s narcissism to prevail. Bessent has been absent from the public stage for a few months, so I consider this return significant.
Bessent is clearly the grown-up in administration, and the more prominent he is, the less concerned about emerging market dynamics the market will be.
Hence, falling yields.
I do wonder how much grown-up Trump can take and how that grown-up can take Trump.
But so long as Bessent is headlining the economic narrative, US yields can enjoy greater calm, and AUD can resume its rise.
