On the weekend sports coverage, they go “around the grounds” to get a flavour of all of the big news.

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Let’s put the kettle on and settle into the global summary from our good friends at Reuters.

MSCI’s global equities gauge rose on Monday, while U.S. Treasury yields declined with the dollar on the prospects of lower interest rates and investors around the world grappled with political uncertainty in countries from Japan and Indonesia to France and Argentina.

A heavy election defeat for Argentina President Javier Milei’s ruling party in Buenos Aires province sent the peso to a record low.

The peso fell 3% against the US dollar, while the benchmark stock index  fell 13.25% and an index of Argentine stocks traded on U.S. exchanges lost 18.6%. Some of the country’s international bonds saw their biggest falls since they began trading in 2020 after a $65 billion restructuring deal.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba resigned on Sunday, ushering in a potentially lengthy period of uncertainty at a shaky moment for the world’s fourth-largest economy, prompting the yen to fall against the dollar.

France’s fourth prime minister in less than two years, Francois Bayrou, lost a ‘confidence’ vote on Monday as the euro zone’s second-largest economy equivicated over its plans to tame the ballooning national debt.

And in Indonesia stocks gave up early gains to finish down more than 1%, while the rupiah rose after Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati was ousted in a cabinet shake-up.

US investors were focused on the prospects for easier monetary policy, however, after Friday’s weaker than expected U.S. jobs data for August appeared to seal the case for a Federal Reserve interest rate cut this month.

Here’s Ameriprise chief market strategist Anthony Saglimbene:

“We had a pretty disappointing employment report on Friday. This week, it’s all about inflation.” 

“Markets are kind of looking past some of the weaker economic data because it likely means that the Fed is going to have more space to cut interest rates this year.”

Oil prices regained some of last week’s losses, after OPEC+’s output hike was seen as modest and due to concerns over the possibility of more sanctions on Russian crude.

US crude settled up 0.63%, or 39 cents, at $62.26 a barrel and Brent ended at $66.02 per barrel, a rise of 0.79% or 52 cents on the day.

Gold surged past $3,600 an ounce for the first time on Monday, as the soft US labor data reinforced expectations that the Fed would cut interest rates.

Spot gold rose 1.37% to $3,635.26 an ounce. U.S. gold futures rose 0.66% to $3,637.10 an ounce.