Euroland PPI
New Woes for Crypto… Service Sector Purchasing Manager Surveys Beat Expectations
March 3, 2023
The price of Bitcoin tokens plunged around 5% overnight. The dollar has declined 0.4% against the Swiss franc and yen, 0.3% versus sterling and the Australian dollar, but just 0.1% relative to the euro. It’s been an up day by and large for equities, with gains of 1.6% in Japan, 1.5% in India, 0.7% in […] More
U.S. Data Out Today Supports Fed Message that a Rate Cut in 2023 is Highly Doubtful
January 5, 2023
The 2022 dynamic of progressively tighter Fed policy supporting the dollar and depressing stocks and bonds remains intact. Minutes from the December FOMC meeting project higher interest rates persisting for some time and indicates that market valuations that imply an initial rate cut late in 2023 are premature. Although inflation cooled in recent months in […] More
Stronger-Than-Forecast U.S. & Canadian Labor Market Reports Reverse Market Momentum
December 2, 2022
North American labor markets again showed great resilience in the face of elevated inflation, tighter monetary policies, and mounting recessionary fears. Normally, that would be a good development for financial markets but not, like the present, when central bankers are trying to endow labor markets with some slack. U.S. share prices had marked time prior […] More
Big Market Turnaround: Equity Rebound and Lower Dollar and Sovereign Debt Yields
October 4, 2022
Market expectations of how much further the federal funds target rate will be raised in the coming six months have been scaled back significantly. The catalyst has been evidence of softer U.S. demand, notably visible in yesterday’s ISM-compiled purchasing managers survey of manufacturers, which dropped 1.8 index points to a 28-month low of 50.9. Sub-indices […] More
Shortlived Equity Rally, More Inflationary Reports, and Day One of an Historic FOMC Meeting
May 3, 2022
Tech stocks had rallied in the final hour of Monday trading, but futures point to a likely drop of at least 0.5% at the start of Tuesday’s session. Share prices fell 0.9% in New Zealand, 0.6% in Taiwan, 0.4% in Australia, and are down 0.8% in the U.K., whose market had been closed for holiday […] More
Financial Markets Reflecting Concerns about Stagflation and Russian Military Aggression
April 6, 2022
Investors are bracing for aggressive monetary policy tightening in the United States and elsewhere to counter inflation that has climbed shockingly high, and business confidence in the one-year economic outlook has been scaled sharply backward. Ten-year sovereign debt yields jumped overnight by ten basis points in the United States and Great Britain, eight bps in […] More
Omicron, Central Banks, ISIS, Metaverse, OPEC, Russia, Inflation and January PMIs Vying for Market’s Attention
February 3, 2022
The top leader of ISIS and his family have died after a U.S.-led raid in Syria. Geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Russia remain very high. A total of 3,623 Covid-19 deaths yesterday in the United States were the greatest single-day total in a year. Omicron affected numerous service-sector and composite purchasing manager surveys reported […] More
Continuing Market Reverberations from FOMC Minutes
January 6, 2022
FOMC minutes released yesterday afternoon, which served notice that the federal funds rate is likely to rise further in 2022 than implied earlier and that central bank balance sheet reduction will commence sooner too, have helped allay concerns that monetary officials are treating the threat of inflation too lightly. Given this change, investors on the […] More
A Respite from Monday’s Difficult Day
October 5, 2021
Following a technology-led rout, U.S. equities are currently up around 1.25%, and the German, French, Italian and British bourses show rises of 0.6-1.0%. This rebound was not reflected in Asia, where share prices closed down 1.9% in South Korea, 1.3% in Japan, 0.9% in Indonesia, and 0.7% in Singapore. New Zealand and Australia markets dropped […] More
Covid Up, Inflation Up, Another Supreme Court Step Toward Overturning Roe, and a Flash Flood State of Emergency in NYC Headline Today’s News
September 2, 2021
U.S. deaths from Covid topped 1,400 on Wednesday, which constitutes a 75% jump from two weeks earlier. Producer prices in the euro area leaped 2.3% on month in July, the most since early 1995. Powered by a 28.9% increase in energy, the 12-month PPI increase swelled to 12.1%, most in almost four decades. Swiss consumer […] More
