- The US Dollar continued to move in line with its strong, long-term bullish trend yesterday, as the strongest major currency, while the Japanese Yen was certainly the weakest. This situation has pushed the USD/JPY currency pair today to a new 20-year high price just below ¥128 during the Tokyo session. We are likely to see further advances over the coming days, but the price may struggle to get beyond ¥130 as this is the figure the Bank of Japan have stated as the furthest they want to see the Yen to fall. The Bank of Japan and the Japanese Finance Minister are making delicate comments quietly encouraging the depreciation, but essentially expressing concerns at its very rapid pace. The EUR/USD currency pair is also close to its 2-year low.
- Many commodities, especially agricultural commodities, have been advancing to reach new long-term highs, showing a strong performance as a sector. Yesterday’s rises in Natural Gas and Corn were especially impressive and these two commodities stand out as showing the most explosive growth. Trading such trending commodities long has historically been a profitable strategy.
- Bitcoin may have found key support at $38,961.
- Chinese GDP growth data came in yesterday above expectations, showing an annualized advance of 4.8% compared to the anticipated 4.2%. However, this failed to give stock markets much of a boost. Stocks and treasuries are mostly weak.
- The Reserve Bank of Australia released the minutes of its recent monetary policy meeting, in which it stated that the Australian economy seems resilient and spending has picked up following the Omicron slowdown.
- Daily new coronavirus cases globally fell last week for the fourth consecutive week.
- It is estimated that 65% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 6.4% of the global population is known to have contracted the virus at some stage.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 505.2 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.23%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing only in Canada, China, and Taiwan.
- A hard lockdown continues into its fourth week in Shanghai, China. It is causing some supply chain disruption globally.