Good morning
US dollar is a little bid this morning with GBPUSD trading down to 1.3680 and EURUSD at 1.1675 which leaves EURGBP at 0.8535 (GBPEUR 1.1715). US 10 year yields also higher, touching over 1.5% briefly yesterday.
Several Fed officials were speaking yesterday including Powell who said that although supply issues have lasted longer than expected and inflation remains high, he still sees it coming lower towards the 2% target in the coming months. Brainard, Bostic, Kashkari and Evans all mentioned the Feds aims to get the labour market back to capacity, suggesting the Fed will not be in a hurry to react to inflation, although most continue to show support for tapering later this year. Next weeks US employment numbers will be closely watched. Plenty of Fed speakers on the calendar today, also plenty of their counterparts from ECB. We also hear from Catherine Mann, a new member of the BOEs policy committee.
While most Fed speakers towed the party line, Feds Rosengren and Kaplan surprised by announcing they are both stepping down over personal trading in individual stocks. I’m not sure on the exact circumstances but I’d hope the rules on PA trading for Fed officials would be pretty clear, so they must have done something pretty daft. Both were reasonably hawkish, we’ll have to wait to see whether their replacements follow similar thinking.
The UK have got the army on standby to deliver fuel if needed. I’m not sure why they are on standby, I’d suggest just get them out on the roads. Who knows, they may get held up by protesters blocking the road. I’d quite like to see how the army deal with them.
I am a bit of a geek when it comes to certain things, one area is technological advances in the military. I love seeing a new aeroplane that has been secretly developed over a few years. I read with interest this morning that the US have successfully tested a scramjet engine. For those not familiar with such a term, a scramjet should allow hypersonic flight, generally anything above mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. Russia have claimed to already have such weapons available, I still find it difficult to think Russia would be so far ahead of the US, I am not saying it is not possible but it seems fair to doubt some claims made by Putin. I have no interest in seeing new weapons used, but I do like new and somewhat revolutionary technology, wondering what impact it may have on commercial travel in the future.
Back to the present day however and as we see a calendar full of central bank speakers to keep our interest.
- 13.00 ECBs Lagarde speaks
- 13.30 US wholesale inventories
- 13.50 BoEs Mann speaks
- 14.00 US house price index
- 14.00 Feds Evans speaks
- 14.45 ECBs Panetta speaks
- 15.00 US consumer confidence
- 15.00 Feds Powell speaks
- 16.00 ECBs Panetta speaks
- 20.00 Feds Bostic speaks
- 22.45 NZ building permits
- 00.00 Feds Bullard speaks
- 00.01 UK BRC shop prices
- 00.50 Japan retail trade
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