U.S. Stock Futures Down but Dollar Marginally Stronger
March 29, 2021
Few significant developments abroad have been reported this Monday. The biggest story, associated with a bank-intensive drop in U.S. equity futures, has been the the suspected large losses just before the weekend of the Archegus hedge fund, which was believed responsible for some heavy block selling on Friday.
The week ahead will be shortened by the Good Friday/Easter holiday and will bridge the first and second quarters. Japan’s fiscal year ends Wednesday, and U.S. President Biden will outline his infrastructure build back better plan that day. The Holi public holiday is being celebrated today in India.
Compared to closing time on Friday, the dollar has climbed another 0.9% against the beleaguered Turkish lira, 0.8% relative to the Mexican peso and 0.5% versus the Australian dollar. Against more widely traded monies, the dollar is down 0.3% versus sterling, unchanged against the yen, and up 0.2% versus the euro and Swissie and by 0.1% against the loonie and the DXY weighted currency index.
Share prices rose 0.7% in Japan and 0.5% in China. The German Dax is also up 0.5%, but U.S. S&P and DOW futures are off 0.3%.
The 10-year Treasury yield has firmed two basis points, while its German and British counterparts are unchanged from Friday.
Progress in clearing the grounded barge in the Suez Canal helped lift WTI oil‘s price by 0.8%, while gold is 0.4% softer.
Europe went on daylight savings time yesterday.
Austria’s manufacturing purchasing managers index leaped 5.1 index points to an 89-month high of 63.4 in March.
Consumer confidence in Finland improved to a three-month high in March.
Irish retail sales rebounded 13.9% last month from January’s 21.8% plunge. The 12-month rate of decline was trimmed to 3.2%.
British mortgage applications fell to a six-month low last month.
Chinese corporate profits in January-February were 179% greater than a year earlier when the economy had been crippled by restrictions to halt the spread of Covid-19. Profits on average grew 4.1% last year.
Singapore experienced a year-on-year drop in producer prices for a thirteenth straight month in February, but the drop of only 0.7% was the smallest in that sequence.
Vietnamese CPI inflation accelerated 0.4 percentage points this month, but the year-on-year rise was still only 1.16%. This was one of several economic indicators reported by Vietnam today. Others showed an unchanged 4.48% on-year advance in GDP this quarter, A $2.03 billion trade surplus in the first quarter, and year-on-year rises of 9.2% in retail sales and 3.9% in industrial production this months.
Malaysia’s MYR 17.9 billion trade surplus last month was 42% bigger than a year earlier.
The pace of new Covid-19 cases remains worryingly high around the world. Two countries of note where the numbers are creeping higher are Japan and Germany. The U.S. had some 60k new cases on Saturday but then 45k yesterday.
Copyright 2021, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: Archegus Capital Management, Chinese corporate profits
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