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 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
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
UK GDP growth was negligible over Q2-Q3 2019 – averaging only 0.04% qoq – and likely remained weak in Q4 at about 0.3% qoq.… 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
In reaction to the coronavirus epidemic governments across the world have enacted measures unprecedented in recent decades, including closing national borders, setting up quarantine zones, restricting travel and closing factories and schools.… Read the rest
The drastic measures which governments across the world have taken so far to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus have few precedents outside of war times and therefore quantifying their economic, financial and social impact remains challenging.… Read the rest
