This is our weekly market update, where we start in the US, cross to Europe and Asia and end in Australia, covering crypto and commodities along the way. As expected, markets continue to wrestle with mega levels of uncertainty, largely driven by US President Trump as Investors are grappling with dramatic policy change around the world. Trump’s back-and-forth implementation of fresh tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China exacerbated broad concerns about the economy. In another U-turn, Trump decided to exempt products covered by the 2018 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) from the recent imposition of 25% tariffs until April 2. “The new U.S. Administration’s highly uncertain tariff policy looks to be damaging confidence and impacting activity,” said analysts at ING, in a note.
Under the new Trump administration, the barrage of initiatives on trade and other issues, such as federal workforce cuts, has fed uncertainty for businesses and consumers. Market unease is also rising. The Volatility index jumped this week and was around its highest level since late last year and up 41% compared with the start of the year. “Volatility is here to stay for a while because we do not have economic and trade policy certainty,” said Irene Tunkel, chief U.S. equity strategist at BCA Research.
Markets were also shaken by Germany’s surprise spending plans, which drove a selloff in the benchmark German Bund. The German 10 year rose by 19% over the past week, to 2.835. Beyond that, deep questions about the future of NATO, and Ukraine have forced European nations to reset their defence spending.
Stocks swung wildly on Friday, with the S&P 500 little changed in afternoon trade. Major indexes cut losses following mid-day comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who told an economic forum that the economy “continues to be in a good place.” Despite that the benchmark S&P 500 marked its worst week in six months. Its down more than 4% from a month ago. The tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite on Thursday ended down more than 10% from its December all-time closing high, confirming it has been in a correction for several months. The Dow is also off highs from last year down more than 3%.
The Global MSCI index rose 0.2% on Friday and was down 1.26% across the week and saw a decline of 5% since its record high on February 18. In contrast the European STOXX 600 was down 0.46% on Friday, and 0.69% from Monday but is still up 9% year to date. But the Australian ASX 200 fell 1.81% on Friday and was down 2.74% across the week and down more than 6% over the past month.
http://www.martinnorth.com/
Details of our one to one service are here: https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/dfa-one-to-one/
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
