Your Weekly Trading Review by UFX.com – Sunday, November 12th, 2017
Here are some of the major financial events of the past week and how they affected the global financial markets:
EUR/USD rose by 0.20%, closing at $1.1665. The GBP/USD increased by 0.39%, closing at a £1.3196 exchange rate.
The Dow fell by 0.17%, closing at 23,422.21. The S&P 500 also decreased by +0.09%, closing at 2,582.30. The NASDAQ had a slight increase of 0.01%, ending at 6,750.94.
Alibaba Sets Single Day Record
Alibaba made more than $25.3 billion in sales on its annual Singles’ Day sales event. Last year, BABA’s sales were just under $18 billion. Yesterday’s sales got off to a fantastic start with about $7 billion of products sold in the first 30 minutes of the day’s activity. The sale event took 812 orders, which was up 23% from the previous year. Alibaba Cloud was able to manage 325,000 orders successfully at peak time. Alipay processed 1.5 billion payment transactions, which was an increase of 41% from the previous year. Six merchants came out on top with $150.9 million in sales each. The yearly Single’s Day Sales event, held on 11/11, was created and organized by Alibaba and is considered the biggest e-Commerce day in the world.
Brexit Talks Underway
Brexit talks have stalled as the United Kingdom hasn’t yet agreed on talks with the European Union. The EU and UK were supposed to begin trade talks in October, but the lack of flexibility on both sides derailed the process. Michel Barnier, the EU’s negotiator, is pressing the UK to resume talks of the exit bill within the next 2 weeks in order to start trade negotiations in December.
Prime minister Theresa May has been pushing for months to break the rigid structure of the last Brussels talks and renter negotiation. Currently, there is no official scheduled meeting within the 2 weeks set by Mr. Barnier. In the meantime, unofficial and regular contact between the 2 sides are done by coordinators Olly Robbins and Sabine Weyand.
That’s our summary of the financial headlines from the past week. Good luck with this week’s trading and stay tuned for the next review from UFX.