Widely Shared Big Losses – Currency Thoughts
Widely Shared Big Losses
November 14, 2025
Yesterday’s stock market sell-off has extended into Friday. One catalyst was the Trump administration’s suggestion that some key data points not collected during the federal shutdown may never be known. This surprise dropped on an investment community already showing rising concern that equity values, especially among in the tech sector, were unsustainably inflated. News that President Trump now plans not to attend the 2025 annual Group of Twenty Summit in South Africa has underlined America’s mounting isolation from the rest of the world, and that shift isn’t sitting comfortably with the dollar’s undiminished role as linchpin of global commerce and financial market activity.
At 0.7894 Swiss francs per dollar, Switzerland’s currency, the perennial refuge in times of capital flight, has gained a further 0.5% above Thursday’s closing level and is trading at its strongest level since the summer of 2011. The U.S. currency also weakened against the Korean won, 0.3% lower against the yen and kiwi, and 0.2% relative to sterling. Alternatively, there’s been no net change versus the euro or Canadian dollar.
Today’s big mover among 10-year sovereign debt yields has been the British gilt with a jump of seven basis points amid reports that the budget statement from Chancellor of the Exchequer Reeves later this month will probably not include income tax hikes as previously had been thought. 10-year yields in Japan, France and Italy are two basis points firmer, while the sudden move out of U.S. equities and eroding confidence in a Federal Reserve interest rate cut next month — now given less than even odds — has seen the 10-year Treasury yield drop five basis points.
Bitcoin’s price has been a huge story this Friday. A 4.6% dive overnight has extended that crypto option’s loss over the past ten business days to more than 17%, depressing the price to a six-month low. Gold took a 1.8% bath, while oil’s price improved 0.8%.
The net overnight losses now among key U.S. stock futures range from 0.6% in the DOW to 1.5% in the tech-laden Nasdaq. South Korea’s Kospi plunged 3.8%, and markets also closed down today by 1.9% in Hong Kong, 1.8% in Japan and Taiwan, 1.4% in Australia and 1.0% in China and New Zealand. In Europe thus far, stock markets in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. are all down at least 1.5%. America may be the new black sheep in the world community of nations, but America still sets the tone for just about everyone else.
A second estimate of GDP and employment growth in the euro area last quarter confirms positive growth but a tepid pace due to the usual suspects of geopolitical strains and high and unpredictable tariff headwinds. Real GDP in the bloc of nations using the euro rose 0.2% compared to the second quarter and 1.4% year-on-year. The quarterly pace was the same as in an earlier estimate, while the comparison to 3Q 2024 was bumped up from 1.3% but still lower than readings in the middle two quarters of 2025. Employment in Euroland edged 0.1% higher and advanced a mere 0.5% from a year earlier.
Within the euro area, GDP flat-lined in Germany and Italy but dipped 0.1% in Ireland and Finland. Spanish growth led the group of big economies, climbing 0.6% from the 2Q level and by 2.8% year-on-year. French growth of 0.5% was an upside surplus but associated with only a 0.9% year-on-year advance. Quarterly growth rates in Portugal and the Netherlands of 0.8% and 0.4% were better than the bloc’s average, while Austrian GDP merely reversed a 0.1% dip in the second quarter.
Among some other members of the European Community, GDP growth in Sweden (+1.1% on quarter and 2.4% on year), Poland (+0.8% qoq and 3.7% yoy) and the Czech Republic (+0.7% qoq and 2.7% yoy) was respectable, but Hungary saw now increase relative to the prior period and only a 0.6% advance from the third quarter of last year.
China’s batch of monthly October data revealed 14-month lows in the 12-month increases of retail sales (2.9%) and industrial production (4.9%). Those increases were down from 4.8% in the first half of 2025 and 7.2% in full-2024 in the case of retail sales and 6.8% and 5.8% for industrial production. New house prices posted a 2.2% on-year drop, matching September’s result. Except for May and June of 2023, home prices have been lower than year-earlier levels since April 2022. Turning next to fixed asset investment, a 1.7% decline in the amount done in January-September versus a year earlier contrasted with full-2024’s 3.2% increase and was the most negative such has been since the first half of 2020, when much of the economy was shut by the pandemic. Lastly, China’s jobless rate edged down 0.1 percentage point to 5.1% last month, matching its average rate in 2024.
Wholesale price inflation in India last month (-1.2%) was its most negative in 27 months and down from 3.4% in mid-2024. A food price decline of 5.0% after -2.0% for that component in September was the main driver of the overall WPI’s shift from +0.1% in September.
Euroland’s trade surplus of EUR 19.4 billion in September was more than twice what analysts were anticipating and 50% wider than the unadjusted surplus of EUR 12.9 billion a year earlier. The seasonally adjusted surplus jumped to EUR 18.7 billion in the latest reported month from EUR 10.6 billion in August.
Copyright 2025, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved.
Tags: Chinese retail sales and industrial production, Euroland GDP and employment, lessening hopes of a Fed rate cut
ShareThisYou can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
