Market Commentaries

It’s a busy week for economic calendar events and data releases from the USA. The Fed announces its interest rate decision on Wednesday evening. There is no expectation that the key interest rate will change from 0.25%. At the same time, investors’ attention will turn to the monetary policy announcement made by Jerome Powell (the […]

As expected, the ECB announced that the key interest rates for the Eurozone region would remain unchanged on Thursday. During the press conference that followed the announcement, the ECB president Christine Lagarde revealed that the current QE/asset-buying programme would not get altered unless economic conditions worsened. The recent commitment by the ECB is 1.85 trillion

Global markets roared back into life during Tuesday’s sessions as US equity markets reopened after the Martin Luther King Day national holiday on Monday. By the time the London-European markets opened, Asian equity markets had experienced mixed fortunes; the leading Chinese index CSI 300 closed -1.47% down the day after China posted better than forecast

During the Asian trading session on Monday morning, China’s latest GDP figures became available for analysis. The economy grew by 6.5% during the final quarter of 2020, beating the consensus forecasts of 6.1%, rising from the 4.9% recorded during Q3 2020. Industrial production grew by an impressive 7.3% year-on-year up to December 2020, the best

US equity markets closed the week out down during last Friday’s New York trading session. Investors and analysts took on board data revealing that both US consumer sentiment and retail sales are falling. Retail sales in the US slumped by -0.7% in December, after the -1.7% fall in November. The highly respected University of Michigan

Germany’s economy contracted -5% during 2020 according to the final GDP statistics published on Thursday morning. The contraction beat the news agency forecasts which predicted a metric of up to -5.7%. The negative reading is entirely due to the COVID-19 virus, and for context, Germany only chipped in with 0.6% GDP growth in 2019. The

Two high impact economic data affected the value of USD during the trading sessions of Wednesday 13. Inflation (CPI) came in at 1.4% annually due to a 0.4% rise month on month, an 8.4% gasoline cost rise for consumers was the main driver for the increase. The Federal budget balance beat the forecasts made by

The US dollar fell versus most of its peers during the Tuesday, January 12 trading sessions. The dollar index (DXY) gave back most of the gains recorded so far during 2021 to end the day trading -0.39% down but up 0.21% year-to-date. In a negatively correlated trading pattern, cable (GBP/USD) traded up 0.91% as the

US equity indices fell from last week’s record highs, apparently due to investors finally beginning to question quoted firms’ fundamental valuations as analysts start to audit earnings during the approaching earnings’ season. The SPX 500 fell by -0.52% and the DJIA 30 only -0.29%. These are modest falls relative to the record-breaking streak all major

COVID-19 will continue to dominate the headlines over the next few weeks. Several countries have reverted to versions of the strict lockdowns they first implemented in March and April 2020. However, the US, UK and European nations are pinning their hopes on the success of mass vaccination to eradicate the virus from global society. The