📈 Market Report.
📊 Yesterday, U.S. retail sales rebounded marginally in February, suggesting the economy continued to grow in the first quarter, though at a moderate pace. The report painted a picture of a cautious consumer, with sales at restaurants and bars declining the most in 13 months amid deteriorating sentiment. February retail sales rose less than expected, 0.2% compared to the estimated 0.6%, but improved with respect to the last period, of -1.2%.
🏦 The Federal Reserve is expected to leave interest rates unchanged this week as it continues to assess the economic impact of the Trump administration’s policies.
⛽ President Trump has announced the return of fossil fuels, declaring it a reversal of policies imposed by what he describes as “years of lunatics and radicals.” He further claims that while Western countries have been self-suppressing their use of these resources, only China has continued to benefit from them, gaining a significant advantage in recent years.
🚗 In China, shares of electric-vehicle maker BYD leapt to a record as the company unveiled a new platform it says can recharge electric cars as quickly as pumping gas.
🇪🇺 The European authorities and their stock exchanges tell us that everything is going well, however, the exodus of industry from Europe continues. Volkswagen is reconsidering its plans to expand production in North America due to the uncertainty around President Trump’s trade policies and the increase in energy costs suffered by German industry since the breakdown of trade relations with Russia. The auto industry is in a state of “paralysis” as companies postpone investment decisions and struggle to manage costs. European sustainability policies have also been a major obstacle and a disadvantage.
📉 According to the OECD, the rate of global expansion will fall to 3.1% this year and 3% in 2026, lowering its projection for its members. Washington’s broad-based 25% tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium, as well as existing US-China restrictions, are taken into consideration in the OECD’s study. While increasing defence spending would put more strain on public finances, it might also help growth in Europe.
💶 European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has stated that the digital euro will not be anonymous, dismissing concerns about potential overreach by “Big Brother” as nothing more than conspiracy theories.
💻 Nvidia’s annual software developer conference kicks off this week, with CEO Jensen Huang set to deliver a keynote address on Tuesday, defending the company’s dominance amidst growing pressure on its customers to control AI-related costs. Investors are also anticipating the unveiling of Nvidia’s new chip system, Vera Rubin, which will succeed its Blackwell chips, marking another significant development in the company’s nearly $3 trillion chip empire.
🌍 Geopolitics:
🚢 According to regional Arab media, in the confrontation between the Houthis and US forces, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman went from attacking to having to defend itself, and some images on social networks show cruise missiles attacking the aircraft carrier, with some of them successfully hitting it. Trump said that every missile launched by the Hutires forces would be interpreted as a missile launched by Iran, and yesterday Iran put its air forces on high alert after intercepting a US drone in its vicinity.
⚔️ Significant clashes erupted last night on the Syrian-Lebanese border as Syrian HTS forces launched attacks against Lebanese Hezbollah forces. The escalating confrontation marks a critical development in the region’s ongoing tensions.
⏳ NATO faces dwindling time to sustain the Ukraine conflict. President Trump announced a much-anticipated conversation with Russian President Putin set for today, highlighting his intention to address the ongoing conflict and expressing a strong desire to halt the tragic loss of young soldiers’ lives. The territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant likely to feature prominently, Trump said the talks with Putin would be about “land” and “power plants”.
🕊️ The British PM said a “significant number” of nations are willing to send peacekeeping troops. Russia has ruled out peacekeepers until the war has ended, saying their presence would make them parties to the conflict.
🇩🇪 Germany’s constitutional court has thrown out new challenges by opposition parties against a plan by the prospective coalition government to push a massive public borrowing initiative through the outgoing parliament. This paves the way for the German parliament to convene on Tuesday to consider the proposals of conservative election winner Friedrich Merz to ease constitutional debt rules and set up a 500-billion-euro infrastructure fund. The pant could be blocked by an enlarged contingent of far-right and far-left lawmakers in the next Bundestag’s session starting March 25. A special, off-budget infrastructure fund that permits borrowing up to €500 billion is part of the defence expenditure plan. Germany’s bid to regain its position as Europe’s growth engine has been well received by the markets, regardless of whether it is at the cost of war, once again.
🇺🇸 Donald Trump has announced that pardons granted by “Sleepy” Joe Biden to the Select Committee of Political Operatives and others have been declared void and invalid, claiming they were signed using an AutoPen without Biden’s knowledge or approval. According to Trump, necessary documents were neither explained to nor authorized by Biden, raising the possibility of criminal misconduct by those who signed on his behalf. Trump has vowed a high-level investigation into the Select Committee members who allegedly destroyed evidence from their two-year “witch hunt.”
🔍 Hunter Biden, son of the former president, who has been under investigation for collusion, drug-related issues, and illegal firearm possession, has reportedly been receiving taxpayer-funded Secret Service protection for an extended period, with up to 18 agents assigned to his security detail. Currently vacationing in South Africa—a nation recently removed from the list of countries receiving U.S. economic and financial aid—Hunter Biden has become the focus of a new announcement by Trump. The former president declared that Hunter Biden will no longer receive Secret Service protection moving forward. The same decision applies to Ashley Biden, who had a team of 13 agents assigned to her security.
🦠 One of the cancelled pardons would be the one issued to Doctor Fucci, and guess what, new information reveals that, as some congressmen as Ted Cruz publicly stated, the U.S. government, through the NIAID led by Dr. Fauci, had been funding gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab through the EcoHealth Alliance nonprofit. it is now being made public that German and UK intelligence agencies concluded early in the pandemic that the COVID-19 virus likely originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
🤐 However, this information was suppressed by the German government and dismissed by UK officials. In 2020, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, submitted a secret dossier to the UK government stating that the virus was “engineered” at the Wuhan lab. But this was rejected by the UK’s chief scientific advisor, Patrick Vallance. After the pandemic began, there was a concerted effort by some officials and scientists to promote the narrative of a natural origin for the virus, while downplaying or concealing evidence pointing to a lab leak, labelling it once again as a ‘conspiracy theory’ and accusing Trump, one of the first to point in this direction, of being a lunatic.
📰 In this respect, The New York Times has now acknowledged that it had “bad information” and that officials and scientists “hid or understated crucial facts” in order to maintain the appearance of a consensus around the natural origin theory. By the way, in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, only reported by the bravest media, this newspaper also said that it was only ‘Russian propaganda’ before admitting a year later that the information was true.
🌩️ Turbulent times and a sense of vendetta loom, as some had foreseen in the symbolism of the First Lady’s attire during the inauguration of the current U.S. president, a moment now seen as a harbinger of the political storms to come.
📈 Market View:
📊 S&P 500 futures are back on an upward trend, pushing the index above 5,700 points at the moment. Nasdaq 100 futures are also recovering and approaching the 20,000 point zone.
💵 The dollar index DXY weakened during yesterday’s session and is back to where it was a week ago, around 103.50. This has allowed the EUR/USD pair to trade above 1.09 again, currently approaching 1.0930.
🏦 In Europe, the DAX 40 is just over 200 points from its all-time highs and continues to rise, currently standing at over 23,290 points.
