- Markets remain in the grip of risk-off sentiment, exacerbated by three rate hikes last week from major central banks. The Fed's 0.75% hike was the highest for 28 years, while the Swiss National Bank made a surprise hike of 0.50%. The Bank of England hiked by 0.25% and is now forecasting UK inflation will peak at 11% later this year. This week will see key CPI (inflation) data releases in the UK and Canada which will be closely watched.
- The Forex market has seen the US Dollar retreat a little since this week's Asian open, but the Japanese Yen continues to look prone to weakness after the Bank of Japan signaled it would maintain its reflationary monetary policy last Friday, putting it on a divergent course from other central banks.
- Most cryptocurrencies last 30% of their value last week, falling with strong bearish momentum, but there has been a minor recovery over the weekend. BTC/USD traded below $18k but has recovered to trade back above $20k. My technical analysis suggests that Bitcoin is likely to reach $14k in the coming days.
- Crypto exchanges and other elements of the cryptocurrency ecosystem have come under pressure due to sharp falls in crypto, with some exchanges refusing withdrawals. This suggests it may be safer trading crypto with cryptocurrency brokers rather than exchanges at present.
- Long-term trends remain in place against stock markets and in favour of the US Dollar, which may reassert.
- It is a public holiday in the USA today, and US markets will be closed.
- The Reserve Bank of Australia will later release their most recent Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes.
- Daily new coronavirus cases globally rose last week, against the long-term trend.
- It is estimated that 66.3% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 6.9% of the global population is confirmed to have contracted the virus at some time, although the true number is highly likely to be much larger.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 539 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.17%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be significantly increasing in Bahrain, Ethiopia, Dominican Republic, Kenya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Chile, Germany, Guatemala, and the UAE.