Daily summary: Wall Street inches higher as investors await key inflation data

• European indices finished today's session mostly lower, with Dax falling 0.12%, while pharma giant Bayer stock jumped  more than 4% on news that its new blood clot drug could make over €5 billion in annual sales. 

• Electricity prices in Germany bottomed below €100/MWh in January, easing further from their December peak of €450/MWh, thanks to lower prices of natural gas, a rise in renewable power production, and lower demand.

• ECB board member Schnabel said financing conditions would need to become restrictive to resolve the ongoing inflation problem, adding that interest rates would still be raised significantly at a steady pace to ensure a timely return of inflation to the 2% target.

• On the other hand, ECB's Centeno believes that the end of interest rate rise process is approaching

• Major Wall Street indices rose slightly on Tuesday as a highly anticipated speech from Powell in Sweden did not cause any major moves on the markets. Powell noted that stabilizing prices requires making tough decisions that can be unpopular politically.

• Dow Jones trading 0.30% higher, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 0.40% and 0.60% respectively and now traders brace themselves for US inflation data on Thursday and start of earnings season on Friday, which may provide hints into how the Fed will move interest rates going forward.

• Fed's Bowman said that despite recent decreases in some inflation measures, there is still a lot of work to be done. She will be looking for convincing evidence that inflation has peaked, as well as more consistent indicators that inflation is on the decline.

• Oil erased early gains and is trading over 1.205 higher on prospects for a rebound in economic activity in China. Also EIA raised the forecast for 2023 world oil demand by 50,000 bpd to 1.05 million bpd, while US crude production is expected to increase to 550k bpd to 12.41 million bpd in 2023 vs prior estimates of +470k bpd.

• Mixed mood prevails on the precious metals market amid a stronger dollar. Gold rose slightly and managed to break above $1875 level, while silver pulled back to $23.50 mark.

• Price movements in the Forex market were rather moderate today and the US dollar managed to halt the recent downward movement. Greenback strengthened more than 0.2% against the franc and pound, and about 0.3% against JPY, CAD and AUD. 

• The vast majority of cryptocurrencies moved higher on Tuesday. The scale of increases is smaller compared to yesterday’s session, nevertheless positive sentiment persists. Bitcoin adds another 1% and is slowly heading towards a key resistance zone between $17,500 and $18,000.

SILVER rally has lost some steam recently, but the bulls still seem to be in control. Looking at the H4 interval, the price is currently struggling with the EMA100 average, which acted as significant support in the past. Should break lower occur, downward move may deepen towards support at $23.3 where the lower limit of the 1:1 pattern can be found. Source: xStation5