- Wall Street indices finished yesterday's trading mostly higher - S&P 500 jumped 0.46%, Dow Jones moved 0.48% higher while Nasdaq surged 0.70%. Small-cap Russell 2000 was a laggard with a 0.1% drop
- Indices from Asia-Pacific traded mixed today - Nikkei and S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.3%, Kospi dropped 1% and Nifty 50 traded 0.6% lower. Indices from China traded 0.8-1.8% lower
- DAX futures point to a more or less flat opening of the European cash session today
- New Zealand's government has officially scrapped full employment from RBNZ mandate and now inflation is a key focus for the central bank
- Argentina's economy minister announced devaluation of peso to 800 per US dollar, a drop of more than 50%. On top of that, taxes on exports were eliminated with energy and transport subsidies were reduced
- Australian Treasury does not expect CPI to reach 2.5% target before 2025/2026
- Asian Development Bank boosted GDP growth forecast for China from 4.9 to 5.2% for 2023, while forecast for 2024 was maintained at 4.5%
- API report pointed to a 2.35 million barrel draw in US oil inventories (exp. -1.5 mb)
- Japanese manufacturing Tankan index moved from 9 to 12 in Q4 2023 (exp. 10) while services index climbed from 27 to 30 (exp. 27)
- Cryptocurrencies pull back amid overall increase in risk aversion - Bitcoin drops 0.5%, Dogecoin trades 1.2% lower and Ethereum declines 0.7%
- Energy commodities trade lower - oil drops 0.8% while US natural gas prices trade 1.2% lower
- Precious metals are pulling back amid USD strengthening - gold and palladium drop 0.2%, silver trades 0.5% lower and platinum declines 0.4%
- USD and CAD are the best performing major currencies while NZD and JPY lag the most
OIL resumed drop after a brief upward correction and is looking towards a test of the $72.50 support zone. Source: xStation5
