Morning wrap (28.03.2024)

• Wall Street indices traded higher yesterday. S&P 500 gained 0.86%, Dow Jones moved 1.22% higher, Nasdaq added 0.51% and small-cap Russell 2000 surged over 2%
• Indices from Asia-Pacific traded mixed today - Nikkei dropped 1.6%, S&P/ASX 200 gained 1%, Kospi moved 0.2% lower and Nifty 50 added 1.1%
• Indices from China traded 0.3-1.9% higher
• DAX futures point to a higher opening of the European cash session
• Fed Waller said he is in no rush to cut rates. Central banker said that stronger than expected economic and inflation data so far this year argues for delaying cuts
• Bank of Japan Summary of Opinions from March meeting showed that BoJ members see need to go slow with further rate hikes and that BoJ must communicate it is not shifting to tighter policy
• BoE Haskel said that while drop in headline inflation is very good news, rate cuts are long way off in his opinion
• Australian retail sales increased 0.3% MoM in February (exp. 0.4% MoM)
• Australian private sector credit increased 0.5% MoM in February (exp. 0.4% MoM)
• Major cryptocurrencies trade higher - Bitcoin gains 0.8%, Ethereum adds 0.9% and Dogecoin rallies almost 4%
• Energy commodities trade mixed - oil gains 0.1% while US natural gas prices drop 0.2%
• Precious metals trade higher - gold and silver add 0.2%, platinum trades 0.4% higher and palladium jumps 1.5%
• GBP and EUR are the best performing major currencies, while NZD and CHF lag the most

USD gained following comments from Fed Waller yesterday, triggering a drop on EURUSD (orange circle). However, the main currency pair has almost fully recovered during the Asia-Pacific session. Source: xStation5