Positive week start for equities in Asia. Tokyo Stock Exchange Nikkei 225 Index closed the session up 0.71% at 28,640.49, Shanghai Stock Exchange advanced 0.46%, Hong Kong + 0.36%, Sydney + 0.35%, while Seoul is a negative exception with a decline of 0.26%. A positive assist comes from Wall Street, with futures on the US stock market rising after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq concluded their best trading week since February of this year, with the benchmark index testing last Friday a new record.
Futures on the Dow Jones are up by more than 100 points, those on the S&P 500 are up 0.30%, while those on the Nasdaq 100 collect 0.29%.
A crucial week for the markets, with meetings of the most important central banks in the world: the FOMC, the monetary policy arm of the Federal Reserve, will meet tomorrow to make the announcement the day after tomorrow Wednesday 15 December.
The following day, December 16, Christine Lagarde’s ECB will meet. The Bank of England’s monetary policy decisions will also be announced on Thursday 16 December.
This week also announcements from the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and the Bank of Japan.
The Federal Reserve has already indicated it is ready to intervene, further strengthening its newly launched tapering, which for now foresees a cut in asset purchases per month by $ 30 billion, compared to the total which amounted to $ 120 billion each month.
Particularly hawkish have been the statements, in recent days, by Fed president Jerome Powell, who said that perhaps it would be appropriate to stop adding the adjective “transitory” to the word “inflation”.
According to economists, Powell & Co will announce, at the end of the FOMC meeting, an acceleration of tapering, which should bring forward the end of the Quantitative easing program before the deadline set for June 2022.
Christine Lagarde’s ECB, on the other hand, is working on a compromise between taking measures against galloping inflation in the Eurozone, and the need to continue to guarantee support for the area’s government bond market. Some economists interviewed by Bloomberg have pointed out that Lagarde would be oriented to ending the PEPP, the pandemic QE with which she bought euro area government bonds since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2022.
Meanwhile, according to economists, purchases should slow down, going from 68 billion euros of purchases in November and October, to 50 billion euros per month of asset purchases in February.
Economists believe, however, that the ECB could decide to strengthen the other traditional purchase program, (asset purchase program-APP) from the 20 billion euros of assets that are still acquired every month with the plan at double the value in the second quarter of the year. 2022.
Purchases should then return to the original amount of 20 billion euros per month by October 2022. In July 2023, the ECB, according to economists’ forecasts, should finally launch a three-month tapering of the APP , bringing traditional bond purchases to zero.
On forex, the euro-dollar ratio is down by 0.18%, just below the $ 1.13 threshold. Dollar-yen rises 0.10% to JPY 113.50; the pound fell 0.17% against the dollar to $ 1.3249; the euro moved back against the yen by 0.07% to JPY 128.23, while against the Swiss franc it fell by 0.05% to CHF 1.0417.