Morning wrap (21.04.2023)

• Wall Street indices finished yesterday's trading lower but off the session lows. S&P 500 dropped 0.60%, Dow Jones moved 0.33% lower and Nasdaq plunged 0.80%. Russell 2000 traded 0.54% lower

• Indices from Asia-Pacific traded lower today - Nikkei dropped 0.2%, S&P/ASX 200 traded 0.4% down, Kospi declined 0.7% and Nifty 50 dipped 0.1%. Indices from China traded 0.5-1.5% lower

• DAX futures point to a slightly lower opening of the European cash session today

• Bloomberg reported that United States and other Western countries are considering a near total ban on exports to Russia

• Fed's Harker said he expects US GDP to grow by less than 1% and inflation to decelerate to 3.0-3.5% this year. Harker also said that some additional tightening is needed after which rates will stay high for some time

• ECB Schnabel said that while headline inflation started to drop on the back of falling energy prices, other components continue to rise

• BoE Tenreyro said that Bank of England may have already tightened policy too much

• Japanese CPI inflation decelerated from 3.3% to 3.2% YoY in March (exp. 3.2% YoY). Core CPI inflation stayed unchanged at 3.1% YoY (exp. 3.1% YoY)

• Flash manufacturing PMI from Australia for April dropped from 49.1 to 48.1. Services gauge jumped from 48.6 to 52.6

• Japanese manufacturing PMI ticked higher from 49.2 to 49.5 in April (exp. 49.9)

• Cryptocurrencies trade mostly higher - Bitcoin gained 0.3%, Ethereum drops 0.1% and Dogecoin jumps 0.5%

• Oil is trading little changed while precious metals trade mixed

• USD and JPY are the best performing major currencies while AUD and NZD lag the most

Nikkei (JAP225) broke above the upper limit of a medium-term trading range in the 28,250 pts area. However, advance was halted and the index struggles to break above the 28,750 level, marked by a peak of previous false breakout. Source: xStation5