- U.S. stocks recovered strongly yesterday, boosted by testimony from the chairman of the Fed before Congress, in which he downplayed inflationary pressures as transitory, driven by supply side issues, and likely to resolve over the coming months. He stated that a return to 1970’s style inflation was “very, very unlikely”. S&P 500 futures have traded higher in recent hours following the U.S. market close yesterday.
- Major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum fell during yesterday’s European session, with each trading briefly at multi-month long-term low prices at pivotal points which were threatening to break down. However, they have recovered quite strongly since yesterday’s New York open, with Bitcoin looking the stronger of the two.
- In the Forex market, the USD is clearly the strongest major currency right now, while the Japanese yen seems to be the weakest. The USD/JPY currency pair is currently trading at a multi-month high price.
- Today will bring releases of German and French manufacturing and services data.
- Last week saw a seventh consecutive weekly fall in global new confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths, suggesting that the current wave of the pandemic is starting to retreat. The effects of the vaccination programs in the most developed economies are now being felt.
- It is estimated that 22% of the world’s population has received at least one vaccination against the novel coronavirus.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 179.0 million with an average case fatality rate of 2.17%.
- The fastest progression in terms of immunizing a population against the coronavirus in all but the smallest states has been in Iceland, Bermuda, Kuwait, Bhutan, Israel, Chile, Uruguay, and Canada, which have given at least one shot to between 70% and 62% of their respective populations. For most of the world, a vaccine still remains distant. However, the pace of vaccination in the European Union, which now has immunized 47% of its population, has picked up significantly. In the U.S., 53% of the population has been vaccinated.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing most quickly in Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burma, Cuba, El Salvador, Fiji, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait (despite its very high level of vaccination), Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Oman, Panama, Russia, South Africa, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom (despite its high level of vaccination).