- Almost all global equity indices fell sharply yesterday. All major U.S. stock indices closed down by more than 2% yesterday. A general recovery in equities began during the Asian session, however.
- The U.S. stock sell-off was led by the big tech companies which have seen massive gains over recent months. Apple, Amazon, and Facebook all closed down by more than 4%.
- The U.S. Dollar has strengthened on risk-off flow despite long-term bearish trend established following June’s “death cross” in the USD Index.
- AstraZeneca has paused its coronavirus vaccine trial as a participant has become ill.
- The Forex market yesterday was driven by strong global risk-off sentiment, with the British Pound the weakest and the Japanese Yen the strongest of all major currencies. However, recent hours have seen a small but significant reversal with riskier assets gaining.
- Coronavirus global death tolls are beginning to fall again, with deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean at 42% of the global daily total, well exceeding those in both the U.S.A. (15%) and Europe (approx. 6%) which shows that the epicenter of the pandemic is well established in Latin America.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases stand at over 27.5 million with an average case fatality rate of 3.25%. Last Friday saw the highest number of daily new confirmed cases ever recorded worldwide, totaled at more than 300,000. Global mortality over recent weeks is lower than it was during the first peak in April.
- The number of new cases is rising strongly in India, the European Union, and the U.K.
- The country with the highest number of new daily coronavirus cases and deaths is India which again saw more than 1,000 deaths yesterday from the coronavirus and reported approximately 90,000 new cases. India has more confirmed coronavirus cases than any other nation except the U.S.A.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing most quickly in Albania, Armenia, Argentina, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Burma, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Paraguay, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, U.A.E., the U.K., and Venezuela.