Waiting Game Except in Gold’s Case
April 9, 2024
Tuesday’s been another wait-and-see day, with little fresh data to provide direction and being just ahead of tomorrow’s release of U.S. consumer price figures and minutes from the last FOMC U.S. monetary policy meeting. The dollar’s a touch softer, declining overnight by 0.5% against the Australian currency, 0.4% versus the Swiss franc, 0.3% relative to sterling, 0.2% against the euro and 0.1% vis-a-vis the loonie and yen. More noteworthy action has been experienced by 10-year sovereign debt yields that dropped so far today by 7 basis points in Italy and Spain, 6 bps in Germany and France, 5 bps in the U.K. and 4 basis points in the United States. Equity markets are mixed, ranging from higher closes of 1.9% in Taiwan, 1.1% in Japan and 0.6% in Hong Kong to drops of 0.6% thus far in Germany and 0.4% in France and Italy. In U.S. markets, SPX is up 0.4%, while the DOW has dipped 0.2%. With a 1.0% overnight rise to a fresh record high in gold (now at $2,375 per ounce, the yellow metal is behaving like Wylie Coyote.
Among price data reported today and showing broad, if not flattening, disinflation around the world,
- Mexican consumer price inflation remained at February’s 3-month low of 4.4%, just half the September 2022 peak of 8.7%.
- Lithuanian CPI inflation of zero percent last month was its lowest in at least 28 years.
- Latvian CPI inflation increased half a percentage point to February’s 0.9% reading, well under the 22.2% cyclical high in September 2022.
- CPI inflation in Ukraine of 3.2% last month was its lowest in 41 months.
- Dutch inflation was confirmed at its preliminary March estimate of 3.1% versus a peak of 14.5% in September 2022.
In a worrisome omen for the Biden reelection campaign, the NFIB monthly measure of U.S. small business sentiment sank further to a 159-month low of 88.5 in March from 91.9 last December and 104.9 in November 2019, just before the onset of the Covid pandemic.
Australian business confidence ticked a point higher to +1 in March, marking the fourth straight reading of either zero or one. Business conditions slipped a point to +9. A separate data release of Australian consumer confidence revealed a 2.4% decline, its third drop in 4 months.
British same-store sales were 3.2% higher in March than a year earlier, the biggest such rise in seven months.
The French current account, which in December had posted its first surplus since before Russia invaded Kuwait in early 2022, recorded its second surplus in three months during February. The EUR 879 million surplus in February compared to a monthly average deficit last year of about EUR 2.9 billion.
As reported previously, the final view of Romanian GDP in 2023 showed a fourth quarter retreat of 0.5% but year-on-year growth of 3.0%, which was above the average 2023 growth rate of 2.1%.
Japanese consumer confidence improved to a 59-month high of 39.5 in March, but machine tool orders posted a larger 8.5% on-year drop that month as well.
Copyright 2024, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: French current account, Japanese consumer sentiment, U.S. small business sentiment
ShareThis
