- The strong US Dollar has continued to advance, reaching extremely close to parity with the Euro in recent hours in the EUR/USD currency pair, and pushing the USD/JPY currency pair to another new long-term high and the GBP/USD currency pair to another new long-term low. This is a very strong trend in the Forex market, so there is probably a good opportunity to trade the US Dollar long as the move has very firm momentum. There seems to be no stopping the greenback and it is feared that its appreciation is going to hurt US corporate earnings and further knock the stock market.
- The Euro and British Pound are the weakest major currencies. Euro weakness is partly driven by fears that Russia will cut off key energy exports to the EU.
- Stock markets and commodities are falling almost everywhere, with the S&P 500 Index down by more than 1% in yesterday’s trading.
- Markets are looking forward to this Wednesday’s crucial US CPI data release, which is very likely to be this week’s main market driver. A few hours ago, a White House spokesperson stated that Wednesday’s data is likely to be “highly elevated”, suggesting the rate will strongly exceed the forecasted month on month increase of 1.1%.
- Bitcoin and Ethereum are both trading lower, falling yesterday for the fourth consecutive day. However, these two major cryptocurrencies are still well off their recent lows.
- The Reserve Bank of New Zealand will release its Official Cash Rate and Rate Statement later today. It is expected to hike the Official Cash Rate by 0.50% to 2.50%, which will be the highest interest rate of any of the 8 major currencies.
- Daily new coronavirus cases globally rose again for the third consecutive week, caused by the omicron subvariant BA5.
- It is estimated that 66.8% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 7.1% 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 561.8 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.14%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be significantly increasing in Bolivia, Belgium, Colombia, Croatia, Montenegro, Switzerland, Albania, Austria, Belarus, Brunei, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, and Tunisia.