Five Things World Business Will be Talking About Today

(Bloomberg) 

It’s Yellen’s second day of congressional testimony, oil’s recovery could be a long way off, and Theresa May presents her Repeal Bill. Here are some of the things people in markets are talking about today.

Yellen, day two

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s first day of testimony to Congress saw the dollar fall against all of its Group-of-10 peers after her comments caused investors to lower their expectations on the pace of U.S. rate increases. Today she appears in front of the Senate Banking Committee from 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, where she’ll likely face more questions on financial industry regulation than on monetary policy.

When’s the oil recovery?

A barrel of West Texas Intermediate for August delivery was trading at $45.23 as of 5:30 a.m. after the International Energy Agency signaled it was less confident that the global market for the commodity was rebalancing as anticipated. Oil bosses are concerned that it may now take until at least 2020 for prices to recover from the biggest downturn in a generation. Halliburton Co. is warning that current low prices are leading to investment spending cuts of about $2 trillion, which will see supply fall and prices spike by that year. Until then, OPEC member nations will continue to feel the pressure as low prices mean balancing national budgets is becoming very challenging.

Repeal Bill

British Prime Minister Theresa May will spend the first anniversary of her premiership trying to shore up support for landmark legislation which will take Britain out the EU. The vital Repeal Bill will transpose EU legislation into British law in order to maintain the status quo and to provide legal certainty through the Brexit process. On the European side, chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has again expressed frustration on the lack of clear positions from the British side, which he says is stopping negotiations from beginning in earnest.

Markets higher

Overnight, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.7 percent, while shares in Japan were little changed as Yellen’s apparent dovishness strengthened the yen. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was 0.6 percent higher at 5:50 a.m. as yesterday’s rally into the close continued to find support. S&P 500 futures were also pointing to further gains at the open.

Coming up…

At 8:30 a.m. weekly Initial Jobless Claims will be released, with expectations for a slight improvement to 245,000 for the period. At the same time, Producer Price Inflation for June will be released with analysts predicting  that prices stagnated in the month. At 1:00 p.m. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard, who earlier this week sounded a note of caution on further U.S. interest rate increases, is due to speak. President Donald Trump is in Paris today.