A relatively quiet Wednesday for announcements, meaning focus once again shifts locally for data. Meanwhile, non-economic events around the world are dominating headlines.

North Korea continues to make markets nervous as it ratchets up its missile program and threats of launching an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). It appears that North Korea will continue to take a hard-line approach to the escalating situation, seemingly unwilling to back down. It is now up to other world leaders to try and ease tensions before it gets out of hand.

The news that North Korea was moving a missile to the country’s west coast (along with its previous military threats) gave markets around the world jitters, particularly the US markets. All three major US Indexes fell overnight. The S&P 500 was down 0.75%, the NASDAQ 0.93%, while the Dow Jones fell 234 points (or 1.07%). While these falls are not large from a historical perspective, it does seem large considering markets have been on an upward trajectory for over a year now.

European markets mainly finished slightly lower, with losses on average under 0.5%. The DAX however, bucked the trend in being the only major European market to post a gain during the trading session, finishing slightly up with a gain of around 0.2%.

Gold remained relatively steady throughout the night as investors pondered the next step in the military tensions with North Korea. Meanwhile, the Euro rallied modestly (or rather the USD may have weakened) and is now sitting back over $1.19 on the back of the same concerns surrounding North Korea.

As for announcements today, the most significant is the Australian GDP figure. The GDP figure indicates economic growth within an economy. During times of economic recovery and global uncertainty, these figures become even more important.

The rest of the announcements today:

Europe – German Factory Orders, Italian Retail Sales, European Retail PMI

US – ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI, Beige Book, Final Services PMI, Trade Balance

Canada – Overnight Rate (interest rates), BoC Rate Statement, Trade Balance, Labour Productivity