- Global stock markets, especially the S&P 500 Index, have ticked up as this week gets underway in Asia.
- WTI Crude Oil fell sharply earlier, and is trading below $35 per barrel for the first time since June.
- Last Friday saw 573,800 confirmed new coronavirus cases diagnosed worldwide – a record high. Recent days have seen over 200,000 new cases confirmed daily in Europe alone. England has become the latest European nation to announce a new multi-week nationwide lockdown as an attempt to stem the tide of cases. The values of the Euro and the British Pound have been hit.
- Forex markets are seeing the U.S. Dollar as the strongest major currency, while the Euro is the weakest.
- The Turkish Lira continues to fall to new all-time lows as a currency.
- Tightening opinion polling suggests that President Trump needs an approximate 1.8% swing from current polls in a few battleground states to win the U. S. presidential election on 3rd November, despite Biden’s considerably stronger polling lead nationwide. President Trump has seen polls tighten in his favor over the past two weeks. If the polls today are as wrong as they were in 2016, Biden would still be likely to win, but very narrowly.
- Our Daily Forex panel of U.S. analysts sees a Trump victory as the most probable outcome, despite the opinion polls.
- Coronavirus daily global death tolls have begun to rise sharply in recent days, with deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean continuing to fall, while the U.S.A. accounts for about 20% of the global total, and Europe approximately 30%.
- The European Union is now seeing more new coronavirus cases and deaths than any other area, with a short-term average of over 220,000 new cases daily. New cases and deaths are also rising strongly in the U.K.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases stand at over 46.4 million with an average case fatality rate of 2.58%.
- India has more than 8.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases, more than any other nation except the U.S.A. which has confirmed more than 9.2 million cases. India is the single country with the highest daily death toll, reporting more than 500 deaths yesterday, although the Eurozone is now exceeding that number overall.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing most quickly in Algeria, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Japan, Kenya, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, U.S.A., Ukraine, the U,ruguay and the U.K.