News that the US and Japan had agreed a trade deal a week ahead of deadline added 5% to Japanese equity prices while lifting 10-year rates to 17-year highs, and this was followed by reports of an impending US-EU settlement, which pushed up European stocks by 2% and German 10-year rates by close to 10 basis points.

As the 1 August deals deadline approached, analysts at Medley Advisors (a division of Energy Aspects) held their weekly internal meeting to add market context to policy analysis. 

"We did get a sense of how much trade uncertainty has been holding back foreign markets in the reaction: double-digit gains in the Japanese auto sector but more broadly," said Dan Schwartz, head of macro markets at Energy Aspects. "So I think just getting certainty and also a number - even if it's a little higher than the 10% that the market had hoped for back in pre-April - it really opens the door to some risk being reestablished in these places. The futures volume was off the charts; it was double what normal volume was ... at a time of year when volumes tend to dwindle ... I think there's a lot of signal in that".

In this edited version of the meeting, the speakers in order are Schwartz, Andrew Besuyen (macro markets), Tim Jones (Europe), and Michael Redmond (US).