- The Forex market saw the US Dollar resume its long-term advance, especially against Asian currencies and most notably against the USD/JPY currency pair which reached another new 20-year high price, due partially to divergent yield expectations and central bank monetary policies. There is a good chance we will see yet higher prices over the coming days, suggesting a good opportunity to trade this currency pair long.
- There is a stronger expectation amongst analysts that the US will be shown to have entered a technical recession when the next quarterly GDP data is released. This is causing a minor selloff in stocks and other risky assets.
- Cryptocurrencies have begun falling again, resuming their long-term bearish trend. It is likely that good trading opportunities remain on the short side, especially in major crypto pairs such as BTC/USD.
- 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.
- Markets are awaiting three major data events today: releases of British and Canadian CPI (inflation), plus Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony before the Senate banking committee.
- Canadian Core Retail Sales data released yesterday showed purchasing has been much stronger than had been expected, with sales up by 1.3% month on month.
- 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 540 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.17%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be significantly increasing in Austria, Bahrain, Brunei, Ethiopia, Dominican Republic, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, Chile, Guatemala, Malta, and the UAE.