Rare nationwide protests in China over zero-COVID policy and a deadly apartment fire sent Asian markets tumbling: the Hang Seng fell 4%, the yuan dropped 1%, and oil slid. Foxconn's iPhone 14 Pro production could fall short by 6 million units, potentially cutting Hon Hai's quarterly sales by 20%. Fed speakers and major economic data this week will shape what comes next.
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Okay, very good morning. Hope you are doing well and had a fantastic weekend. Going to jump straight in and start talking about China to kick things off. That's really been the dominant news story over the weekend and also has impacted markets to get things underway for this week ahead, of which ends with the likes of US non-farm payrolls coming out, of course, on Friday. But we'll talk about that calendar in a moment. So let's talk about what's happened in China, where at least 10 cities including the likes of Shanghai and Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu were all shaken by what are very rare political protests over the weekend. So signs of discontent publicly on the streets against the government, as I said, it's very rare in China, and it's triggered clashes with police and security officers and has led to a spat of arrests across the country. Why are people so angry? Well, it's Xi's zero-COVID approach, which of course involves mass testing, quarantines, snap lockdowns. And the catalyst has been— that's really sparked such outrage— about an incident where lockdown rules are being blamed for what's hampered rescue efforts in a fire in an apartment block where 10 people have lost their life. Now, all eyes now remain on the government and how they go about attempting to quell this public anger, how brutal they might be, and whether the incidents are a catalyst or not for real change in the zero-COVID policy strategy, or if the country just sticks to a stance that's been kind of come to known as the Communist Party's kind of ideology. So analysts that I've been talking to and, and listening to this morning seem a little bit split on this. The path out of COVID lockdown strategy for China was always going to be complicated. The fact that they're highly reliant on a domestic COVID vaccine, which is less efficient than perhaps some of the others seen in the Western world, the fact that then their take-up rates of getting vaccinated is relatively low comparative to the Western world, and also the, the lack of immunization just naturally given the severity of the lockdowns that have been in play mean that this was always going to be a tricky path for them to come out of this on the other side. The other less, I guess, bearish view might be that just given what's happening, the Chinese government are going to have to act, whether that's in economic or monetary policy type responses, or whether or not in the actual COVID strategy in itself. And so actually, could this be, despite the knee-jerk negative reactions, actually slightly more positive in long term? The jury is kind of out on the split on how you want to take that. Overnight though, the Hang Seng China Enterprise Index declined about 4% to kick off the week. The onshore yuan weakened by as much as 1% at the open, and that is the most since May in terms of an intraday movement. Oil prices have also slumped quite dramatically. You can see here from these headlines on Bloomberg, oil prices as WTI crude has plunged to its lowest level since the end of 2021 as the China unrest rattles markets. One other thing to be aware of here, well, this is just a bit of the context of where we've been on the journey of, of crude oil, obviously spiking on the initial invasion of Russia in Ukraine and then the aftermath of that up to around north of the $120 price point a barrel. But here we are, and this morning we are trading down at around $74 this morning. Something else to keep an eye on is the European Union diplomats. They're going to be meeting, they're going to be locked in talks over the Russian— the cap on Russian crude prices. Negotiations are set to resume later today, Monday the 28th of November. Kind of the knock-on things to look out for then is potential disruptions to the supply chain given what's happening in China. And the headlines this morning is in regards to Apple, which of course is still highly dependent on their manufacturing processes coming out of, of China in particular. And the violent protests at a key manufacturing hub in China are likely to result in a shortfall of close to 6 million iPhone Pro units this year. And it's the iPhone Pro on the 14 line that's been the particular kind of star product rather than their base product on the normal standardized 14. And so disruptions to that could be very impactful for Apple as a company. The Foxconn facility on the Zhengzhou campus, which produces a vast majority of those devices, has been impacted by this, this worker unrest over the COVID lockdown rules. For context, to give you an idea, the manufacturing complex hosts about 200,000 employees during the peak iPhone production season. So just absolutely be huge. Analysts at the US investment bank Morgan Stanley, they've worked out through a worst-case scenario for Apple and Foxconn— so the two, Foxconn being the supplier to Apple, they come together under an entity called Hon Hai Precision Company— and their Zhengzhou facility, if it couldn't ship any iPhones for the rest of the year, that could result, according to Morgan Stanley, in in a 20% shortfall in expected sales for Hon Hai in the current quarter. So probably worth keeping an eye on Apple shares as we get underway on the street later today. Talking of the street and the high street, US shoppers have kicked off a holiday season with a muted Black Friday. E-commerce spending on Black Friday rose by just over 2%, according to Adobe Analytics. So yeah, while retailers have been heavily discounting and metrics show that is pretty much the most severe discounting that we've seen since really the onset of the pandemic and the kind of knee-jerk reaction to that. And they've been trying to then clear out some bloated inventories. Customers have responded in a very modest way in terms of actual measured footfall on traffic. So, yeah, pretty lackluster, but pretty much a sign of the times, one, one might say. And in terms of the week ahead, Yeah, it's a busy week. There's plenty coming out from a Fed perspective. Keep an eye out for speakers. You got Feds Williams and Bullard, they're going to be speaking later today, as so is the ECB President Christine Lagarde addressing European Parliament committees today. And then data-wise, looking at the States, so you'll see here you've got the likes of ADP National Employment on Wednesday, you've got PMI numbers, and of course then you've got non-farm payrolls being than the first Friday of the month, the 2nd of December. In terms of what people are expecting from that, the headline is expected to come in at a circa 200K print, but there's also going to be interest in the ISM Manufacturing Index and the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, the core PCE deflator number. And that's all going to be published, in fact, those data points on Thursday, which is a really key day. So Thursday, Friday for US data. Otherwise come back up to Wednesday, going to be a key day for the eurozone, and that's because we do get the flash CPI reading for November. And this one is particularly important because the ECB have been focusing more on the current inflation developments to determine then what they're going to do and whether they're going to move to more smaller rate hikes. So that November inflation figure is going to be really quite key to shape those views. The headline expected year-on-year to come in around 10.5% for the eurozone Flash CPI, the core reading, at around a 5% mark. And then other things to be aware of: Fed Chair Jerome Powell does give a speech alongside Feds Michelle Bowman and Cook on Wednesday alongside the release of the Fed's Beige Book as well. So yeah, pretty busy docket overall, kicking off on a fairly negative footing to get things underway in electronic trade US index futures are lower. We've had a little bit of recovery in the European Open, but we're still down as the market's kind of just digesting what's been going on, predominantly with the focus on, on China at this point. And so yeah, calendar ahead super busy, so stay tuned. If you're not already subscribed to the channel, please do. More videos coming out throughout the week. And remember to check out the link for our free newsletter to keep on top of things. All right, take care and have a good week ahead.
