- The Forex market is active with a strong advance by the US Dollar continuing. USD/JPY has hit another 20-year high just below ¥130, while the EUR/USD currency pair hit a new 5-year low just above $1.05. The British Pound and Swiss Franc are also continuing to fall strongly against the Dollar. This dollar movement is presenting a good opportunity to trend traders, as the strong momentum suggests that the EUR/USD is likely to continue to fall over the coming days.
- The Bank of Japan released its Outlook Report a few hours ago, in which it indicated it will maintain its monetary stimulus. The Bank of Japan’s policy is strongly divergent from that of other central banks, who are mostly hiking rates and tightening monetary policy, suggesting that the Japanese Yen is likely to continue to weaken.
- Major global stock markets mostly rose yesterday and during today’s Asian session, clawing back some of the previous day’s losses.
- Several commodities rose yesterday. Corn stands out in this asset class, as it continues to advance to new 7-year highs, sustaining its long-term bullish trend and looking very interesting to trend traders.
- Bitcoin continues to struggle to rise to reach $40k after finding support below $39k. Volatility in Bitcoin and in crypto generally has decreased significantly over recent days.
- There will be a release of US Advance GDP data today, which will be closely watched. It is an important fundamental indicator but not as important as the CPI (inflation) rate.
- It is a public holiday in Japan this Friday, so it may be wise to avoid short-term trades in the Yen during the hours that would coincide with that Tokyo session.
- Daily new coronavirus cases globally fell last week for the fifth consecutive week.
- It is estimated that 65.1% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 6.5% of the global population is confirmed to have contracted the virus at some time.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 511.5 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.22%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing only in China, Barbados, Finland, the Solomon Islands, Taiwan, and Trinidad.
- A spate of new coronavirus cases in Beijing, China is being met with mass testing aimed at almost the entire population of the city and panic buying there, following the ongoing hard lockdown in Shanghai, which is still underway, with public disquiet observed over late delivery of food supplies to the quarantined population. The lockdown has caused some disruption to global supply chains.