- Markets are quiet in the absence of any real major news or themes, excepting the release later today of US CPI (inflation) data which will be eagerly digested. A month-on-month increase of 0.2% is expected. If the data matches or is lower than that estimate, it may be taken by the market as a sign that US inflation has finally peaked, which could be positive for risky assets and negative for the US Dollar.
- In the Forex market, the US Dollar is regaining a little strength, but the market is consolidating strongly so it is hard to make any call until we see the response to the US CPI print later.
- Stocks and other risky assets are mostly lower.
- BTC/USD has dipped but is still held by a bullish price channel.
- Daily new coronavirus cases globally dropped last week for the third consecutive week, reversing the earlier trend of an increasing number of confirmed cases.
- It is estimated that 67.2% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 7.5% of the global population is confirmed to have contracted the virus at some time, although the true number is highly likely to be much larger.
- Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 591.4 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.09%.
- The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be most significantly increasing in Barbados, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Serbia.