- Markets saw the risk rally continue, with major currencies (especially the New Zealand Dollar) gaining against the USD, and stocks, BTC/USD and ETH/USD rose to their highest levels seen since mid-June. This rally may be challenged by any negative surprises in today’s inflation data releases.
- The Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia communicated a few hours ago that Australian inflation is expected to reach 6 to 7%, and that further rate hikes will be necessary to deal with it.
- There will be releases of British and Canadian CPI (inflation) data today which could cause volatility in those currencies.
- Daily new coronavirus cases globally dropped last week for the first week since early June, reversing the short-term trend of an increasing number of confirmed cases.
- It is estimated that 66.8% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 7.2% 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 569.8 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.12%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be most significantly increasing in Albania, Australia, Barbados, Bolivia, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Mexico, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Paraguay, Qatar, Singapore, Switzerland, and Tunisia.