Morning Briefing: Markets react to G20

Markets react to G20 
World stock markets have started the week with the G20 meeting in focus, specifically the failure of finance ministers to agree on free trade, as fears of growing protectionism persist.

Monday also sees the start of the China Development Forum and Shanghai and Hong Kong indexes were the notable achievers of the session while a weakened US dollar hit Japanese exporters, weakening the Nikkei; Australian retailers weighed an announcement from Amazon that it is to launch there this year. Most Asian indexes closed lower.

European markets are also trending lower following the G20. Weak German data has added to the weakened sentiment.
Wall Street and Toronto are expected to open lower. 
 

	Latest	1 month ago	1 year ago
North America (previous session)
US Dow Jones	20,914.62 (-0.10 per cent)	+1.41 per cent	+18.82 per cent
TSX Composite	15,490.49 (-0.46 per cent)	-2.20 per cent	+14.77 per cent
Europe (at 5.00am ET)
UK FTSE	7,412.96 (-0.16 per cent)	+1.55 per cent	+19.76 per cent
German DAX	12,063.15 (-0.27 per cent)	+1.99 per cent	+21.17 per cent
Asia (at close)
China CSI 300	3,449.61 (+0.11 per cent)	+0.63 per cent	+8.75 per cent
Japan Nikkei	19,521.59 (-0.35 per cent)	+1.41 per cent	+16.72 per cent
Other Data (at 5.00am ET)
Oil (Brent)	Oil (WTI)	Gold	Can. Dollar
51.46 (-0.58 per cent)	48.30 (-0.98 per cent)	1232.60 (+0.20 per cent)	U$0.7496
			Aus. Dollar
			U$0.7725

Former Morgan Stanley executive calls G20 stance “disturbing”
A former executive of Morgan Stanley has given his assessment of the G20 finance ministers’ meeting and called its lack of commitment to global free trade “disturbing.”

Stephen Roach, now a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, told CNBC that he was disappointed that the ministers could not agree to keep trade open, instead seemingly opting for more protectionist measures.

He said that Donald Trump sees free trade as hurting US jobs but pointed out that the world is linked through global supply chains and that protectionism will “turn back the clock” on globally-trading companies such as Apple.