A week full of appointments and essential macroeconomic data begins to evaluate the next moves of the central banks
2′ reading
European stock markets are preparing to start the first session of the week with a cautious rise. The Eurostoxx 50 futures are progressing by 0.02%, the same performance for those of the Ftse Mib, Paris rises by 0.07% while Frankfurt is down by 0.02%. What opens today will be a week full of macroeconomic events and data, essential for evaluating the next possible moves by central banks in the area of monetary policy, in particular the release of data relating to inflation in the Eurozone in January, in I’ll arrive on Thursday.
There is also great anticipation for the Fed and ECB minutes, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Furthermore, investors will monitor the data relating to salary negotiations that the ECB will release on Tuesday and which will be useful for understanding the future decisions of the Frankfurt institution given that President Christine Lagarde has reiterated that it is an indicator to be kept under observation in view of future interest rate cuts. In Asia, the Tokyo stock market was hit by last week’s decline on Wall Street (which will remain closed today for the President’s Day national holiday), in the wake of signs of a recovery in inflation in the United States.
The flagship Nikkei index remained stagnant (-0.04% at 38,470.38 points), two steps away from the all-time record (38,915.87 points on 29 December 1989). The Hong Kong stock market fell sharply (-0.98%), despite the gains in Shanghai and Shenzhen, which reopened today after more than a week’s break for the Lunar New Year holidays. On the currency market, the euro/dollar exchange rate stood at 1.0788 (Friday’s close of 1.077), the euro/yen at 161.781 and the dollar/yen at 149.948. Gas is falling to 24.3 euros per MWh (-2.1%), while as regards oil, the April WTI stands at 77.8 dollars per barrel (-0.84%) and Brent of the same maturity at 82.77 dollars (-0.84%).