The Good Friday/Easter Break but Also Awaiting U.S. Jobs Data
April 7, 2023
Several markets in the Pacific Rim were shut today, including those in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore. Most of Europe was closed for holiday. Good Friday is not a federal holiday in the United States, but while banks will be open, stock exchanges will stay shut, muting any response to U.S. labor market data due at 08:30 EDT (16:30 GMT). Canada is closed. The holiday will extend into Monday in many of the markets closed today.
Overnight dollar movements have been minimal today, limited in most cases to +/- 0.1%. Oil has stabilized at $80/barrel, and crypto and gold are just modestly softer. Among Asian stock exchanges that traded this April 7, share prices jumped 1.3% in South Korea and rose 0.5% in China, 0.3% in Pakistan, and 0.2% in Taiwan and Japan.
Investors expect the U.S. jobs report to show a smaller March rise in employment than experienced in either January and February but not so low as to elicit a rate rise pause from the Fed. The jobless rate is projected to be likely unchanged, and a modest further deceleration in the growth of average hourly earnings is anticipated.
Several second tier Japanese economic indicators were reported. A robust 2.7% rise in real household spending in January turns out to have been sandwiched between drops of 2.1% in December and 2.4% in February, and the latter was associated with a smaller-than-forecast 1.6% 12-month increase. Japanese average wage earnings grew 1.1% on year in February, which translated into a 2.6% inflation-adjusted drop. Japan’s indices of leading and coincident economic indicators improved to 4- and 2-month highs in February, but officials still deemed the latter to be on a “weakening trend.” The index of lagging economic indicators fell 1.4 points to a 5-month low, an Japanese international reserves contracted $31 billion last month after a $24 billion decrease in February.
Although the French current account deficit shrank to an 11-month low of EUR 2.989 billion in February, the January-February combined shortfall was almost three times wider than that in the opening two months of 2022.
Croatian producer price inflation of 9.3% in March was down from 12.7% in February and a record high of 24.0% last June.
Chinese foreign exchange reserves rose $51 billion in March, reversing February’s drop in full.
Romanian real GDP expanded 4.7% in 2022, down from 5.8% in 2021.
S&P’s rating of Ukraine sovereign debt has been downgraded to CCC with a negative outlook designation.
The National Bank of Kazakhstan’s policy interest rate was left at 16.75%. The last change was a 75-basis point increase in December that culminated 700 basis points of tightening during 2022 after a combined 75 basis points of increase during the second half of 2021. CPI inflation in Kazakhstan slowed in March but, at 18.1%, still exceeded the policy rate level.
Copyright 2023, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: Good Friday market closures, National Bank of Kazakhstan, U.S. jobs report
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