The United States’ post-war record GDP contraction in Q2 of 9.5% qoq and the Dollar’s recent depreciation have been making headline news but some perspective is required.
The US GDP contracted about 10.6% in H1 2020, far more than in China (+0.6%) and South Korea (-4.6%).… Read the rest
Major currencies, equity markets and the price of crude oil since 8th June – the cycle low in the US Dollar – have exhibited reasonably limited directionality, narrow trading ranges and very low volatility, with the notable exception of currencies in Latin America.… Read the rest
Price action in major currencies was again subdued last week. With few tier-one macro data releases for markets to trade off the focus was on the reaction function of governments and central banks to covid-19 related developments.… Read the rest
While GDP data for Q1 are now “old” and seemingly of limited use, it makes little sense to forecast global growth in Q2 and beyond without at least knowing the starting point.… Read the rest
While the United States and China have not gone as far as re-introducing or increasing tariffs on each others’ imports, the war of words between the two trading superpowers has clearly escalated with Hong Kong caught in the middle.… Read the rest
Global GDP growth, in year-on-year terms, slowed to -2.7% in Q12020 from +3.1% in Q4 2019 and in quarter-on-quarter terms to -4.5% from +0.6% in Q4, based on growth rates in 14 major economies accounting for close to 90% of world GDP.… Read the rest
Financial-market post-mortems for 2019 are out and the bottom line is that the trade was to be long pretty much everything – including US and global equities, bonds and commodities (bar natural gas) – but short equity and FX volatility.… Read the rest
The metronomic rise in US equity indices to new record highs, spurred in part by the recent detent in US-China trade relations, is understandably making the headlines.… Read the rest
Asian currencies, bar the safe-haven Japanese Yen and Philippines Peso, have come under greater pressure this week as the number of reported coronavirus cases in China (and now 23 other countries) and reported deaths in China has increased (see Figure 1).… Read the rest
