UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, sticking to his guns
The EU is reported yesterday to want to call his bluff but he’s still keeping his cards close to the chest for now, so we will have to wait and see how things go in the next week.

Coveney continues to feed more pessimistic remarks on the day
– Fishing is a big obstacle
– A landing zone on fishing is hard to envisage
Cable has erased all of its earlier gains to sit around 1.2880 now, testing its 200-hour moving average after the push higher earlier got rejected by near-term resistance. It is a

ITV reports
The report says that as virus cases are increasing in the north west, north east, and Yorkshire/Humberside, ministers are ‚feeling their way towards imposing severe restrictions on socialising in those areas‘.

Latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association for the week ending 2 October 2020
–  -4.8%
– Market index 804.7 vs 769.6 prior
– Purchase index 316.0 vs 320.9 prior
The long-term mortgage rate slips to its lowest on record in the survey’s history, and that is arguably spurring the increase in refinancing activity – which carried the jump

The news sent the pound lower from 1.2960 to 1.2920
Bloomberg is reporting that the EU has no plans to offer concessions to Boris Johnson before next week’s Brexit deadline on 15 October (this is the UK’s deadline FWIW), betting that he won’t make good on the threat to walk out without a deal.

Forex news from the European trading session – 6 October 2020
Headlines:
Markets:
– CHF leads, AUD lags on the day
– European equities a little higher; E-minis down 0.2%

The firm says negative rates are unlikely even if there is a no-deal Brexit
„With two heavyweight insider MPC members ( and ) coming out publicly in opposition, at least at the moment, we see a high barrier to negative policy rates. We now think that outright cuts in the bank rate to below zero in

Politico reports
The report says that talks between Pelosi and Mnuchin are going ‚very slowly‘, citing a source from Pelosi’s conference call with Democratic leaders. There’s not much else besides this but at least negotiations are still ongoing for later in the day.

St Louis Fed president, James Bullard, speaks in a WSJ interview

Forex news from the European trading session – 5 October 2020
Headlines:
Markets:
– CHF leads, JPY lags on the day
– European equities higher; E-minis up 0.7%