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China-US Trade Talks
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China-US Trade Talks

Futures are quiet as top trade representatives (not the individuals pictured) meet in London…

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Monday, June 9, 2025.

State of Play

It’s a quiet start to a week that will almost certainly be highlighted by China-US trade talks. As we eye or board of indicators for signs of direction at 0645, there isn’t much to go by:

  • Stock index futures are flat with the exception of small caps and these are moving higher. The Russell 2000 is up 0.7%;

  • Commodities aren’t doing much either. WTI crude oil is up 0.5% to trade close to $65/barrel, a high water mark for the past month or so. Copper is unchanged. Gold and silver are flat as well;

  • Cryptos are showing a few signs of life with Bitcoin up <2% to trade north of $107,000;

  • Bonds are seeing a few bids. The 10-year yield is down 3 basis points to 4.49%;

Cover art by author via Grok AI

Today’s Known Events

Representatives from China and the US will meet in London this week to hammer out a trade deal. That should generate most of the headlines this week. On the topic of China, we just got a bunch of data from the world’s second-largest economy, including its trade balance which came out to a surplus of $103 billion, roughly in line with estimates. This despite imports and exports dropping precipitously. China’s economic data does not always make sense, which is why some will claim it is embellished if not invented outright.

Anyway that’s all we have on the calendar today. We’ll get the Consumer Price Index on Wednesday and producer prices on Thursday. A few earnings but nothing that should move the market at large.

The Bottom Line

The market appears in wait-and-see mode over these Sino-US trade talks. Stocks have rallied the last two weeks so there is that. Like we said last week, the presumptive move appears to be higher as investors seem to have rediscovered risk appetite after a tough spring.

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