- The FOMC meeting minutes releases yesterday show the Fed is focused above all on combating inflation, while it warns against any “unwarranted” easing of monetary policy, pushing back against speculation that the Fed will begin cutting rates during the second half of this year by saying rates should remain elevated for “some time. This release had little effect upon the US Dollar or the US stock market.
- The long-term bullish trend in precious metals continues, with the price of spot Gold rising yesterday to make another 6-month high above $1865. The price of spot Silver is also bullish, but less so. Both Gold and are attractive to long-term trend traders in the long direction right now, as higher prices here are likely over the coming days.
- In the Forex market, we currently see counter-trend retracements in the major currency pairs, especially in the USD/JPY currency pair and somewhat less drastically in the the EUR/USD currency pair. Yet the strong long-term technical trend against the US Dollar remains. The market is currently consolidating so the outlook for today looks very unclear.
- Yesterday’s release of Swiss CPI (inflation) data showed a month-on-month decline of 0.2% compared to the decline of 0.1% which had been expected. It is a small difference but gives slight weight to the sentiment that inflation globally is falling.
- More major companies are announcing major job cuts, with Amazon announcing it will shed 18,000 jobs after Salesforce announced it would be making major cuts.
- Releases yesterday in the USA of US ISM Manufacturing PMI data and US JOLTS Job Openings data produced no real surprises, although the JOLTS data was a bit better than had been expected.
- Daily new global coronavirus cases decreased last week for the second consecutive week.
- It is estimated that 69.1% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 666.6 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.01%. The number of new cases has fallen globally over the past 2 weeks.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be significantly increasing only in China, the Philippines, and Taiwan.