- After yesterday's weak session on Wall Street, which was marked by declines in technology companies and a nearly 2% sell-off on the Nasdaq100, APAC markets closed the session in mixed sentiment. The Nikkei lost 0.3%, Korea's KOSPI posted a small 0.17% gain, and China's Hang Seng closed flat. The Australian ASX was down more than 1.2%. The European session is mostly closed today, due to a public holiday
- Q1 earnings of Amazon came in higher than expected, with strong cloud and e-commerce business. Shares gains slightly in pre-market (almost 1%), but AMD (AMD.US) and Super Micro Computer (SMCI.US) AI 'benchmarks' are losing almost 7% and 10% after quite disappointing quarterly reports
- Investors are waiting today for the Federal Reserve's decision, which will almost certainly keep rates unchanged; so attention turns to Jerome Powell's speech. The dollar index (USDIDX) today continues yesterday's powerful gains and is trading 0.1% higher, with EURUSD down 0.1%
- Recent macro data from the US does not please investors. After last week's weak GDP, yesterday's Conference Board consumer sentiment data pointed to the weakest reading in nearly 2 years, with wage growth still elevated
- This, combined with higher inflation expectations and the latest CPI / PCE readings, markets see as a negative 'mix' for risky assets, putting the Fed under pressure to maintain restrictive policy
- Precious metals contracts (gold and silver) are trying to catch their breath today after yesterday's declines and are slightly gaining, 0.1% and 0.6% respectively
- Oil and gas continue to perform poorly. OIL and NATGAS are trading down 0.5%. Yesterday's API data indicated a sizable weekly drop in gasoline inventories (almost -1.5 million barrels vs -0.6 million barrels previously) and an increase in crude oil inventories (4.9 million barrels vs -3.2 million barrels previously)
- Agricultural commodities are losing today. Cotton is trading nearly 1% lower, extending yesterday's nearly 4% decline. Wheat prices on the CBOT (WHEAT) are settling at $603 per bushel
- The sentiment of the cryptocurrency market remains weak, with Bitcoin trading at $59,700 i.e. a very important on-chain level, indicating the average purchase (so-called realized price) of short-term investors (holding BTC for less than 6 months). Twice before, during the ongoing correction, this level proved to be an important support
- The attention of the markets today will be oriented to the ADP (1:15 PM GMT), JOLTS (3 PM GMT) and US manufacturing ISM (3 PM GMT) data. At 3:30 PM GMT EIA data from the oil market will be published. At 7 PM GMT we will learn the Fed decision. Powell's conference will begin at 7:30 PM GMT
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