Investors last wishes as be watching out for developments on the U.S.-China trade front following a report by Xinhua news agency last Friday that Chinese Deficiency Premier Liu He spoke via telephone with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
The document, according to the South China Morning Post, said: “The two sides have further made concrete progress on the exercise book of the trade agreement between the two sides.”
The news comes after CNBC reported Thursday that Chinese middlemen suggest combining a state visit to the U.S. with the signing of a trade deal. Beijing wants a deal to be fully ironed out in the past Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. President Donald Trump.
“While there is presumably a strong US governmental imperative to get a deal done ahead of next year’s elections, and presumably China is keen to bed down this flow, and while we expect a deal to be proclaimed, we can only believe it once it’s seen,” David de Garis, a director and senior economist at Patriotic Australia Bank, said in a morning note.
Russia plans to be fully compliant with OPEC-led supply severs over the next few weeks, according to the country’s energy minister, Alexander Novak.
His comments came three months into a nave round of production cuts from the so-called OPEC+ alliance. The producers meet in mid-April to review their oil stocking cut agreement, which is scheduled to last through the first half of 2019.
Oil prices slipped in the morning of Asian trading hours but were unmoving above lows touched a week ago. The international benchmark Brent crude futures contract declined 0.31 percent to $66.95 per barrel, while U.S. brusque futures fell 0.46 percent to $58.25 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its colleagues, was at 96.571 after slipping from highs above 97.2 in the previous week.
The Japanese yen traded at 111.54 against the dollar after foretelling highs below 111.0 last week. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.7083 after lows under $0.704 in the previous trading week.
— CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Sam Meredith contributed to this report.