• Trump cranks up the anti-China rhetoric again
• USTR's Greer: China realizes it over-stepped
• Fed chair Powell: Future path of monetary policy driven by data and risk assessments
• Powell Q&A:A risk that slow pass-through of tariff start to look like persistent inflation
• More from Powell: Further declines in job openings might start to show up in employment
• IMF boosts 2025 global GDP forecast to 3.2% from 3.0%
• Lagarde says she cannot say how high the bar is for cutting rates further
• BOE's Bailey: Today's labour market data back my view of softening
• Fed's Collins: It seems 'prudent' to cut rates further
• Li says China aims to “continuously form new growth points for expanding domestic demand,”
• Fed's Bowman says she continues to see two rate cuts before year end
• US ambassador to NATO says a big Ukraine weapons announcement coming tomorrow
• Canada August building permits -1.2% vs +0.2% expected

Markets:

• Gold up $32 to $4142
• US 10-year yields down 2.3 bps to 4.02%
• WTI crude down $1.03 to $58.47
• S&P 500 down 0.2%
• JPY leads, AUD lags

It was a lively day.

Stock futures were down badly ahead of the open and sank even harder afterwards before finding strong support at Friday's low. That's where the rally started and it might have had something to do with CNBC announcing that US Trade Rep Greer would be on TV. The thinking was that he would be softening the US's position and that's exactly what he did as he said China realized it over-stepped. He floated some other positive points too and that added to the rebound, eventually taking stocks to strongly positive territory. The Russell 2000 hit a record, climbing more than 2%, in part due to strong earnings from Wells Fargo.

Of course, Trump tossed another hand grenade late, hinting at more retaliation against China for not buying US soybeans and starting a fight over cooking oil. That led to some rapid selling and somewhat of a soft close.

Powell, Bailey and Lagarde all spoke in a rare trio of top central bankers. None offered anything particularly market moving or insightful but it fill the gap left by the absence of US economic data. All of them were relatively upbeat on growth and Lagarde highlighted surprising resilience and that was exactly what we saw in the IMF forecasts, which were generally better than July, particularly for Japan.

Canada was an outlier as the IMF downgraded its forecast for this year and next by 0.4 pp each. That was underscored by a poor building permits report today and a downward revision. Despite that, the loonie was one of the strongest performers today as we await (expect?) some positive US-Canada trade headlines on aluminum, steel, energy and maybe more.