- A small rally in stocks and other risky assets quickly reversed yesterday, with stocks and commodities (especially agricultural commodities) declining firmly and the US Dollar rebounding after a selloff.
- The Forex market is currently seeing a strong US Dollar, back in line with its long-term trend. The Japanese Yen is the weakest major currency, and the USD/JPY currency pair is rising again and beginning to threaten its recent high above ¥136.50.
- Yesterday’s release of US CB Consumer Confidence data came in slightly lower than expected.
- OPEC is meeting today.
- The heads of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England, will be speaking later at a panel discussion in Portugal.
- Daily new coronavirus cases globally rose again last week, against the long-term trend. It may be that the omicron subvariant BA5 will cause another significant wave.
- It is estimated that 66.4% 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 550.6 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.15%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be significantly increasing in Albania, Austria, France, Iraq, Israel, Kenya, Qatar, Bahrain, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore, and the UAE.