The Week In Markets: 4th - 8th April 2022

Okay, very good morning folks and welcome to a brand new week and hope everyone had a great weekend. Going to run through some of the weekend's news updates on Ukraine. We've got record deliveries for Tesla, um, China goes into pretty much full lockdown with mass texting— testing across Shanghai, and then we're going to look at the week ahead. We've got the RBA interest rate decision, you've got US non-manufacturing ISM and the FOMC minutes coming out Wednesday, which are the highlights. But let's get straight to it and talk about the major stories in play this morning, because European gas is up again. And the reason here is that the EU is said to be preparing the introduction of more sanctions on Moscow after reports of atrocities emerged in the wake of Russia's military retreat outside of the outskirts of the capital city of Kyiv. And EU ambassadors, they are expected to discuss a fresh round of measures on Wednesday, according to diplomats with knowledge of the plans. And we've heard similar from the German Chancellor this morning. So also looking at the broader mix of charts this morning, euro-dollar is a little bit lower, equity index futures also a touch lower as well this morning on the back of those latest developments of pricing in the new prospect of potentially more sanctions coming. The details of what those sanctions could be has not emerged at this point, but given that a lot of the talk at the weekend is that these might come out midweek, likelihood is we're going to get an intensification of, of those talks and therefore details leaked out to the market probably in the coming 48 hours. So just be aware of that if you're trading short-term markets. Otherwise, away from that, Russian negotiators handling the peace talks are actually between the two countries going to be having fresh discussions today. So everything's kind of intermixed at the moment. So something to just be, be closely watching as we go forward. The other major story over the weekend is the continued developments of COVID in China, and it essentially continues to get worse at this point. China added more than 13,000 new COVID-19 infections, with state media reporting a case, as you can see here, infected with a new subtype of the Omicron variant. Now, before you get kind of spooked and panicked about kind of sub-variants of Omicron. I'd say, you know, not being a medical scientist, but these things are not too unexpected. As time goes on, you would expect a degree of mutation to take place. But of course, the fear being then about immune or vaccine evasiveness and so forth. None of that's being talked about at the moment. So a little bit of context. China has sent the military and thousands of healthcare workers into Shanghai, which has been the focal point of last week, going into that kind of two-part city lockdown. I did see some unverified reports late last night talking about a full-on Shanghai lockdown, but I haven't seen confirmation of that this morning. But what this has all kind of led to is the fact that they're looking to carry out mass testing for all 26 million people that live within Shanghai. So continue to keep one eye on that. And you would kind of think that oil would be trending lower, and in fact we did gap down and actually in electronic trade moved initially a bit lower in crude futures. However, we kind of rallied through the overnight session, predominantly overweighted by the, the idea of potential fresh sanctions coming in on, on Russia. And WTI crude actually has reclaimed a $100 handle. We're trading up about a dollar on the session at the moment at $100 spot, $50 at the moment in front month futures. Hong Kong actually fared a lot better, and the rationale behind that has been effectively that tech shares specifically were up over 4%, and that came after Beijing has sought to modify a rule that restricts offshore listed firms from sharing sensitive financial data with foreign regulators. And actually, that might allow the US to gain full access to audits, and that's then the key metric for those types of companies— Chinese-based, Hong Kong— to be continually listed in the US. Remember, the threat of being non-US listed was a big negative force for tech stocks, amongst other things. And so a little bit reversal and softening of that rhetoric has seen them being propped up overnight. Otherwise, in terms of Fed speak, there's been a couple of speakers. Probably the most interesting one was Mary Daly. As you can see here, she is a non-voting member this year, but she is typically known as a leaning dove and what otherwise is making quite, quite kind of more aggressive hawkish comments. She said the case for a half-point interest rate increase at the Fed's next policy meeting in May has grown, and it coming from someone of her disposition, it's kind of pretty much locked that in, and that's pretty much as the markets priced. As you well know from the FedWatch indicator that's looking at short-term interest rate futures in the US from the CME, and we can derive a probability of a 50 basis point rate hike currently resides at around 70% at the moment. So very much priced into markets barring anything unexpected at this point in time. Citigroup, I did see the US bank, they did say that the Fed could even go as far as to deliver half point increases at the next 4 meetings. Now, if you think about what markets have been pricing, which is ever more aggressive rate hike cycles in the near term, which is flipping that yield curve into inversion that we saw momentarily about a week ago, and Citigroup getting even more forceful on how quick that the Fed will have to move to contain the, the surging inflation situation that we're, we're having at the moment. And so they're going for 4. The market pricing at the moment is only for around 2 back-to-back May-June double hikes, if you like it. So just putting that out there. The other thing from a geopolitical front, I don't think this is particularly important, but wanted to update nonetheless because I've spoken about it in recent weeks. And that is Iran. This is Iran themselves have said that it's close to reaching an agreement with the US over restoring that 2015 nuclear accord after sending its latest proposals to Washington for resolving the impasse over the terrorism sanctions. That was according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency over the weekend. I must say that that comes in conflict with what Washington said at the end of last week, and all of this hinges on the point that during the Trump era is when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were deemed as a terrorist organization. Iran saying that they're on the way to rolling that back, the US saying that's not going to happen. So status quo, so to speak. Again, an Iranian deal, I'd say unlikely to be in the, in the pipeline for this week, but we'll keep an eye. The other thing from a stocks perspective was Tesla, worth keeping an eye at the open. Despite, despite all the supply chain disruptions, China's zero COVID policy, all could have been severe headwinds for the company. Tesla actually delivered 310,048 cars worldwide in Q1. That was a slight beat of market expectations. But do be aware that right now the Shanghai production has been suspended just because of the COVID situation, as aforementioned, is getting worse at the moment there. And that is still at this point, although the Berlin factory is now open and underway, Shanghai is the predominant area of where their vehicles come from. They have already put up prices, remember, I think it's both for the Asian and the North American customer And with that supply disruption and further price increases that we're seeing on those base metals that are very key for the manufacturing of those cars, it'll be interesting to see how someone like Tesla does perform in the following quarter. Otherwise, looking at the week ahead, a few things to be aware of. I'm not going to go over every single thing. Monday, today, probably the most interesting things are you're going to get US factory orders later this afternoon. Tuesday, you've got the interest rate decision coming out of Australia. Now, we're not anticipating any type of change in their interest rate policy. However, market participants are keeping an eye on any change in the rhetoric, looking for clues of when rate liftoff might take place. Otherwise, on Tuesday, you've got the Eurozone, UK, US services PMIs. These are the final readings. And then you've got the US ISM service PMI, which will be quite interesting. The reading has fallen sharply over the past 3 months after having peaked at around 68.4. Kind of combination of Omicron and the squeeze on spending power, the surging inflation has, has just kind of impeded demand. Uh, ING analysts have said that they're hopeful of a corrective bounce in March, but with consumer sentiment remaining subdued and a growing sense that aggressive interest rate hikes are on their way, They do say that the upside of the ISM is likely to be limited on the service side, uh, for the time being. Otherwise then, moving further on to Wednesday, uh, we do get the FOMC minutes coming out. That's probably going to draw a degree of attention, uh, for any discussions on the balance sheet reduction, which the Fed is expected to provide an update at its May meeting, the next one of course. And that's when they're also priced to hike by a further 50 basis points. There were no meaningful updates in March, though the statement now says that the committee expects to begin reducing its Treasury holdings and agency debt and mortgage-backed securities at the coming meeting. So the fact that those— that kind of statement was made, that line would indicate that those discussions have been fairly progressive. And so therefore, in the detail of the minutes, do we get any more clarity on that, that balance sheet reduction, which could be quite key to supplement this kind of narrow focus at the moment purely on just rate hikes. Tightening of the balance sheet would be also timing quite critical to determine the ongoing yield movement we've been seeing in yield volatility. Otherwise then, Thursday you've got the ECB minutes and you've got weekly jobless claims as per usual, and then Friday overall is pretty quiet. And that is it. So hopefully that was useful. Any questions or comments at all, feel free— excuse me— to just leave a comment on the video And don't forget to sign up for the Daily Market Maker newsletter. The link is in the video description, and I wish you a good week ahead. Take care.