📊 Macro-News round-up:
#MarketNews

📈 Let’s recap last week’s data. US Q4 growth rate cut. Only 0.1% less than initially estimated. On the other hand, the PCE rate confirms that inflation is in line with expectations and has not produced any surprise spikes. Friday’s US macro figures were negative, which is not a bad thing for the markets, which benefit from a more negative macro outlook, attracting more easing from the Fed. From 49.1 to 47.8, the manufacturing ISM declined even worse, into contraction zone. Additionally, the ISM employment index fell to a very poor 45.9, and the number of new orders fell below 50.

📊 US markets had a great start to March. Friday saw gains of 0.8% for the S&P 500 and 1.14% for the NASDAQ. On Friday, Chinese stocks likewise enjoyed a respectable day. The CSI 300 gained 0.62% and the Hang Seng gained 0.47%.

📆 This week is likely to be a key week for the markets. We will have the European Central Bank’s interest rate decision, speeches by its president, speeches also by Jerome Powell of the US Federal Reserve, and we will close the week with new employment data from the world’s largest economy, the NFP and the unemployment rate.

🌍 The G10 central banks have not raised interest rates in February for the third consecutive month, which is the longest such run since summer 2021.
With anticipation for a move by the Fed later in the year bolstered by recent solid U.S. statistics, the market is fully focused on when major central banks could start easing policy.

🏦 While delivering a record-low benchmark mortgage rate, China’s central bank maintained its key policy rate.

🇯🇵 Following his attendance at the G20 meeting in Sao Paulo on Thursday, Ueda, governor of Bank of Japan, stated in a briefing that policymakers are increasingly adopting a soft-landing scenario for the global and US economies. Policymakers at the Bank of Japan have viewed the possibility of a hard landing in the world economy as a major danger that may compel them to postpone ending a large stimulus programme that has lasted for decades. Ueda refrained from drawing the conclusion that inflation will reach 2% in a sustainable manner. However, he persisted in believing that the economy was headed for a mild recovery, even though new statistics indicated that Japan had entered a recession at the end of the previous year.

💹 The BoJ’s hard-liners seem to be slowly making the rest of the world aware that years of negative interest rates, capped bond yields and unlimited asset purchases are coming to an end. In historical moments with record ratios in the USDJPY pair.

🌐 Geopolitics: Donald Trump, the top presidential candidate, has suggested that if he were to defeat Joe Biden on November 5th, he would impose a 10% duty on all imports and raise the tariff on Chinese imports by 40 percentage points to 60%.

📉 According to an IW study, According to the report, the decline in exports and consequent decline in private investment would cause the German GDP to fall by 1.2% by 2028. It could fall as low as 1.4% if China responded with an increase in import taxes of 40 percentage points of its own