📰 Macro-News round-up
📊 #MarketNews

🚢 The accident of the cargo ship against the Baltimore Bridge has disrupted the traffic of all other cargo ships, making it difficult to enter and exit ports. The impact this could have on the supply chain as well as influences on the inflation rate are being considered. It is estimated that the value of goods passing under the bridge is as much as $28 billion a year.

💼 Consumer confidence data released yesterday in the U.S. came out slightly weaker than expected. 104.7 versus 106.9 expected. The average before the pandemic was around 130 points, these levels have only recovered momentarily during June 2021, and since then we have been in the vicinity of 100 to 115 points.

🇯🇵 Japan: Another turn of the wheel. The BoJ’s published core inflation rate came in at 2.3%, lower than the expected 2.5%. Alleviating fears of the recently published inflation spike.

🇨🇳 China: industrial profits released early this morning show a turnaround in the trend, after a negative 2023, January and February results put the index at 10.2% YoY growth. Thus showing a good start to the year for the Chinese economy.

📈 Market: US stocks had a little decline. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ experienced a decline of less than 0.5%. Chinese stocks increased in value. The CSI 300 gained 0.51% and the Hang Seng gained 0.88%.

🗓️ Today News: U.S. crude oil inventories will be released today, and there will be remarks by Federal Reserve Board Member Christopher Waller.

🌍 Geopolitics: Yesterday, Reuters published that, according to the TASS news agency, Russian intelligence services, FSB, believe that the US, UK and Ukraine were behind the weekend’s terrorist attacks, in which at least 139 people were killed. For their part, Western intelligence services were quick to attribute responsibility to an Afghan branch of ISIS.

🔄 Meanwhile, in a further shake-up that comes after last month’s reform of the military high command, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council and appointed the director of his foreign intelligence agency in his place.

⚡ Tuesday saw the greatest level of daily electrical imports into Ukraine this year as a result of several outages in various areas brought on by Russian missile strikes on vital infrastructure, according to the energy ministry.

🇷🇺 Do sanctions against Russia work? According to Euractiv.com sources, a number of institutions in China, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey have increased their criteria for adhering to sanctions in recent weeks, which has led to delays or even the rejection of money transfers to Moscow.