- Stock markets are mostly lower over the recent New York and Asian sessions. The movements are only natural retracements within bull markets.
- The U.S.A. has now suffered more than a quarter of a million total coronavirus deaths.
- Precious metals and the British pound are the weakest major currencies, while the Japanese yen and U.S. dollar are the strongest, fitting the current “risk off” retracement.
- The price of WTI Crude Oil has hit a new 2-month high price, as demand for oil intensifies.
- Although political analysts generally concur President Trump has no way to remain in office, betting markets are still taking bets on the eventual certified winner, with President Trump implied a 5% chance of remaining in power.
- I expect the Japanese yen to rise over this week as a reaction to last week’s fall, as the Japanese economy enjoys its fastest rate of economic growth in over 50 years.
- The Turkish lira regained a lot of ground last week after its recent run of strong selling. Typical mean reversion suggests the lira is likely to continue falling over this week.
- Canadian CPI (inflation) data came in higher than the expected 0.2%, at 0.4%.
- Australian employment data came in far higher than expected, with almost 200,000 new jobs created, and the headline unemployment rate falling from 7.1% to 7.0%.
- Last Friday saw 660,906 confirmed new coronavirus cases diagnosed worldwide – a record high. Over 600,000 new cases were reported yesterday, a relatively high amount.
- Yesterday the record high number of 10,977 global coronavirus deaths were reported.
- Coronavirus daily global death tolls are continuing to increase sharply to new highs 25% higher than the former record peak made last April. Deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean continuing to fall, while rising strongly elsewhere, notably in Europe and in the U.S.A. The U.S.A. accounts for about 22% of global coronavirus deaths, Europe 47%, with Latin America at 19%.
- The European Union is now seeing new coronavirus cases begin to fall, but is still more afflicted than any other geographical area, as lockdowns begin to have an effect. New cases in the E.U. are considerably higher than in the U.S., with a higher amount of deaths too. However, these numbers are still increasing in the U.S. while the rate of new cases is clearly starting to decline in the E.U.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases stand at over 56.2 million with an average case fatality rate of 2.40%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing most quickly in Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Canada, Denmark, Georgia, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Kosovo, Malaysia, Mali, Pakistan, Panama, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Sudan, Trinidad, Turkey, U.S.A., Ukraine, and the U.K.