- The strong US Dollar remains firm after ending last week at a new 20-year high. It is clearly the strongest major currency, while the Euro ended last week as the weakest. The EUR/USD currency pair is technically in a strong downwards trend, but Friday’s bullish pin bar suggests that we may already have seen a medium to long-term low price here.
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- Chinese stocks are trading firmly lower on fears of more economically disruptive lockdowns, which are being introduced as part of China’s unique “zero covid” policy.
- The Japanese Nikkei 225 Index is trading higher today, as results show a big win for the ruling party in yesterday’s elections to the upper house of the Japanese parliament.
- 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.
- 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 560.7 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.14%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be significantly increasing in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Belgium, Colombia, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Montenegro, Pakistan, Switzerland, Albania, Austria, Belarus, Brunei, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Tunisia, and the UAE.