- Global stock markets fell quite strongly yesterday, with most major indices down by 2%. The Japanese Nikkei 225 Index hit especially hard as it falls strongly to a new 3-month low price. Analysts are tending to attribute the dip to an increasing fear of inflation with the U.S. yesterday releasing data showing annualized inflation running at 3%, its highest level in a quarter of a century.
- The total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency asset class fell by almost 20% in only two hours after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer be accepting purchases in Bitcoin due to environmental concerns over Bitcoin mining. Cynics will ask whether Musk has only just become aware of the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. The cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple were hit hard but have begun to recover firmly, especially Ethereum, which made a new record high just yesterday.
- The Forex market is seeing the U.S. dollar continue to make a comeback, with the Japanese yen looking like the weakest currency over the medium term.
- Today will bring the release of U.S. unemployment claims data, and a 30-year U.S. treasury auction.
- Last week saw the first weekly fall in global new confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in nine weeks, suggesting that the current wave of the pandemic may be beginning to retreat. The worst hit country at present is India, although the number of confirmed new cases there has been falling over the past few days from its very high peak above 4,000.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 161.1 million with an average case fatality rate of 2.08%.
- The fastest progression in terms of immunizing a population against the coronavirus in all but the smallest states has been in Israel, which has given at least one shot to 63% of its entire population followed by the U.K. at 52%. For most of the world, a vaccine remains distant. However, the pace of vaccination in the European Union, which now has immunized 29% of its population, has picked up significantly.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing most quickly in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Georgia, India, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Trinidad, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan.