A Deadly and Stressful Year about to Close
December 30, 2021
With New Years Day falling on Saturday, most major markets will not be trading tomorrow. What trading there has been today has been light, and there will be few regrets to seen 2021 pass on to the ages.
The weighted DXY dollar index has slipped less than 0.1% overnight but shows a significant advance of 6.6% compared to its end-2020 level. In overnight trading against specific other currencies, the dollar climbed 2.6% against the Turkish lira and 0.1% versus the yen and yuan. The greenback dipped 0.4% vis-a-vis the kiwi, 0.2% against the loonie, peso and Canadian dollar, and 0.1% against sterling and the Swiss franc. EUR/USD is unchanged from Wednesday’s closing.
Since the end of 2020, the dollar has recorded advances of 10.7% relative to the yen, 7.7% versus the euro, 6.0% against the Australian dollar, 5.1% versus the kiwi, 3.3% vis-a-vis the Swiss franc, 1.2% against sterling and a minuscule 0.3% compared to the Canadian dollar. An outsized 76% advance has occurred against the Turkish lira.
Share prices overnight have slipped 0.5% in South Korea and 0.4% in both Japan and Singapore but rose 0.8% in New Zealand and 0.6% in China. European equities are marginally higher, and U.S. futures point to modest opening gains in the S&P and Dow from yesterday’s record high closings.
Ten-year sovereign debt yields have slipped three basis points in the U.K., two bps in the United States, Spain and Italy, and a basis point in Germany and France but also ticked up a basis point in Japan.
Among commodities, WTI oil and gold are 0.6% and 0.2% lower.
In the final weekly report of 2021 on U.S. jobless insurance claims, the four-week average of new claims dipped below 200k for the first time this year to print at 199.25 thousand. For only the week of December 25, claims totaled 198k versus 206k in the previous week and 763k in the equivalent week of 2020 (which also showed a 4-week average of 823k).
Among price data released today was revealed a record high rate 24.5% of Greek producer price inflation in November. This was the eighth straight month with a double-digit rise and contrasts dramatically against an 8.0% drop in producer prices between December 2019 and December 2020.
Malaysia also reported an eighth straight double-digit rate of PPI inflation, but such slowed to 12.6% in November from a 122-month high of 13.2% in October.
Producer price inflation in Austria accelerated 1.3 percentage points to 15.3% in November, which is the highest since at least Y2K and up from minus 1.0% in the final month of 2020.
Spanish consumer prices leaped 1.3% on month in December, their greatest monthly climb in 116 months, and that resulted in on-year CPI inflation of 6.7%, a percentage point more than anticipated and the highest 12-month increase in 357 months.
Switzerland’s KOF-compiled leading economic index dropped less than expected to a 10-month low of 107 in December from a reading of 107.5 in November and a 2021 high of 143.6 last May.
Portuguese industrial production grew 1.2% last month, enough to produce an on-year increase (albeit just 0.2%) for the first time since July.
Britain’s Nationwide house price index climbed 1.0% on month in December and 10.4% from a year earlier. The 12-month rate of rise has been narrowly confined between 9.9% and 10.5% for the past five reported months.
Russia’s composite and service sector PMI indices printed at 3-month highs of 50.2 and 49.5, respectively, in December. Business confidence in the service sector fell to a 16-month low, and overall input price inflation reached a 7-month high.
Turkish economic sentiment fell to a 6-month low of 97.6 in December.
Dutch business sentiment printed at a 4-month low in December of 10.2 following a record high of 12.7 in November.
Spain’s EUR 2.135 billion current account surplus in October was the eighth monthly surplus in a row and roughly twice the size of the surplus in October 2020.
Between November 2020 and November 2021, South Korean industrial production and retail sales climbed 5.9% and 4.6%, respectively.
The most closely watched statistics in 2021 weren’t economic measures but rather the daily Covid numbers. The pandemic entered its second calendar year like a lion and is leaving it still very virile and mysterious. Around 200 million new cases were reported around the world, and those were associated with a death count of close to 3.5 million people. The U.S. case and death totals since the start of the pandemic currently stand at over 53 million and 821 thousand, respectively. The 301.5k seven-day U.S. average of new cases yesterday set another record, and the one-week hospitalization rate of 75.5k was 11% higher than two weeks ago.
Copyright 2021, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: Covid in 2021, Spanish CPI, U.S. jobless insurance claims
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