Most Everything Shut for Good Friday But One Big Data Report Being Released
April 2, 2021
The list of countries closed today includes Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Canada, India, Singapore, Norway, Italy, France, Spain, Great Britain, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brazil, South Africa, and Germany.
The United States is essentially shut too, and there will be no equity market trading. But the monthly labor market situation data will be released at 08:30 EDT by the Labor Department, and that means banks and bond market trading will observe a half day in the morning. The jobless rate is projected to fall further, and employment is likely to advance at least 600k.
Aside from a 0.9% drop against the Turkish lira overnight, dollar movement has been minimal, with dips of 0.2% versus the yen, 0.1% relative to the Swiss franc and kiwi, and no net change relative to the euro, loonie, sterling, yuan, peso, or Australian dollar.
Japan was open, and the Japanese Nikkei advanced 1.6%. The 10-year Japanese JGB yield rose a basis point as did its U.S. counterpart. Reflecting continuing very aggressive quantitative stimulus by the Bank of Japan, the monetary base posted a 20.8% on-year increase in March versus 19.6% in February, 18.9% in January, 17% in 3Q 2020, 9.1% for 2020 as a whole and 3.6% in 2019.
South Korean consumer price inflation accelerated 0.4 percentage points to a 14-month high in March of 1.5%, but underlying core inflation was much less at 0.6% last month.
In Asia, equity markets climbed 0.8% in South Korea, 0.9% in Vietnam, and 0.5% in China.
At yesterday’s OPEC+ meeting, oil ministers agreed to slowly taper down production quotas beginning next month, and the price of WTI crude jumped 3.9% in response. The price of gold is trading 0.8% higher.
Romanian PPI inflation, which had been negative 2% last May, increased to a 13-month high of +2.1% in February.
The global purchasing managers index in manufacturing climbed 1.1 index points in March to indicate the quickest rate of expansion since February 2011.
In Thailand the index of business confidence printed 4.5 points higher at a 22-month high of 50.1 in March after having relapsed at the turn of the year to a 6-month low of 44.2 in January.
Copyright 2021, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: OPEC, U.S. labor market situation
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