U.S. Sets Records for Monthly Trade Deficit and Number of New Covid Cases
December 29, 2021
With 2021 winding down, the dollar settled back overnight by 0.3% overnight against sterling and peso and by 0.2% relative to the euro, Swissie, Australian dollar, kiwi, and weighted DXY index. However, 2021 has been a robust year for the dollar, which sports a 7% weighted on-year advance.
Identified cases of Covid are busting out all over around the world, totaling a record 6.55 million or 935 thousand per day during the week through December 28. 267k or 28.6% of that daily grand total occurred in the United States. Such was associated with a rising daily hospitalization rate of 75k but a level death count of 1,243.
The United States also tallied its largest monthly trade deficit ever according to preliminary November figures showing a shortfall of $97.78 billion. That was $14.59 billion wider than October’s deficit and resulted in a January-November red-ink total of -$985 billion in America’s balance of trade.
In other market action this Wednesday, ten-year sovereign debt yields are up six basis points in the U.K., four bps in the United States, France and Italy, and three bps in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. The ten-year Japanese JGB yield, however, remained steady at only 0.05%, and the dollar/yen rate also is unchanged.
Stock markets fell back 0.9% in China and South Korea, 0.8% in Hong Kong, 0.6% in Japan and Germany so far, and 0.5% in Italy. But the Dow and S&P 500 firmed 0.3% in the first 45 minutes of their trading.
Prices for gold and oil have retreated 1.1% and 0.5%, but WTI oil is a whopping 56% above its end-2020 level.
Austria’s December manufacturing purchasing managers index improved 0.6 points to 58.7 after November’s ten-month low to a 2-month high. Russia’s manufacturing PMI edged down 0.1 point to a 2-month low of 51.6.
Producer price inflation in the Philippines was only 0.9% last month, which is inconsequential by global standards but up significantly from minus 5.8% last January and the highest such has been Since August 2019.
Producer price inflation in Singapore swelled to a 500-month high of 25.0% in November.
M3 money growth in the euro area decelerated to an on-year pace of 7.3% last month from 7.7% in October and averaged 7.5% in September-November. The slower pace resulted from a smaller rate in the narrowest M1 money aggregate. On-year growth in loans to households of 4.2% and loans to non-financial firms of 2.9% was little changed from results in October.
Business confidence in South Korea improved to a four-munth high in December.
Investor sentiment in Switzerland recovered to a two month high of zero in December from -10.8 in November, +13.6 in October and an all-time high reading of 72.2 last May.
Portuguese retail sales increased by 2.8% last month, resulting in a 6-month high 12-month rate of increase of 9.9%.
Thailand recorded its biggest on-year advance since June of industrial production in November. The 4.8% increase exceeded market expectations.
Several Vietnamese economic indicators were reported today, including GDP growth of 5.2% year-on-year this quarter and 2.6% for 2021 as a whole. Industrial production and retail sales were respectively 8.7% and 1.1% greater in December than in the final month of 2020, and total and core CPI inflation ended this year at 1.8% and 0.67%, respectively.
U.S. pending home sales fell 2.2% last month and recorded their sixth on-year decline in a row, this time by 2.7%.
Copyright 2021, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: Covid data, U.S. trade deficit
ShareThis
