Musk and Facebook parent Meta CEO Zuckerberg have been egging each other into a mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas, with both billionaires trading jabs online last month.
It looks like we might be getting the Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk fight after all, just not in a cage. Meta Platforms plans to launch a microblogging app, Threads, challenging Musk just days after the Twitter executive chair announced a temporary cap on how many posts users can read on the site.
Beyond Silicon Valley, markets seem content to take it easy with a light data calendar and a U.S. holiday. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was higher, the dollar was firm, and oil prices were steady.
Investors in Asia were mostly focused on will they or won’t they questions around yen intervention, which may continue to dog markets this week as the Japanese currency hangs around the key 145 per dollar threshold.
That line in the sand was briefly breached on Friday, prompting a strong warning from Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki. Since then, the yen has stayed below 145 but remains perilously close enough to keep markets nervy.
Japan’s top financial diplomat, Masato Kanda, said on Tuesday that authorities were in close contact with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other overseas officials almost every day on currencies.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) chose to stand pat on interest rates after data last week showed consumer inflation slowed to a 13-month low in May. The Aussie dollar slid 0.3% after the policy decision to keep the cash rate at 4.1%.
Economists polled by Reuters ahead of the meeting were split on the RBA’s decision, with 16 out of 31 expecting a hike and the rest forecasting the bank to stand pat.
Since a surprise pause in April and subsequent hikes in May and June, economists have been mostly divided in recent months over the RBA’s next move.
Key developments that could influence markets on Tuesday:
US markets were closed for Independence Day.
German import and export data for May
Reuters
