"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Nancy Pelosi hasn't made a final decision about stopping in Taiwan during her trip to Asia, but her staff and security officials haven't ruled it out, a person familiar said. If she does visit, it'd be within days of an expected phone call between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. The US president said he expects to speak with his Chinese counterpart this week.

함의: 대만 방문을 명확히 하지 않았지만 해당 일정을 포함해 준비 중임.

China’s economic slowdown is spilling over to major exporting nations in Europe and East Asia through falling demand for manufactured goods, causing Germany and South Korea to post rare deficits with the world’s second-largest economy. Elevated global commodity prices meant that China’s official import growth of 1% in June from a year earlier hid a worse result for manufactured goods. Imports of hi-tech products and mechanical and electrical goods fell about 8% last month, according to recently released Chinese customs data. There doesn’t seem to have been an improvement this month, with South Korea’s exports to China falling 2.5% in the first 20 days of July.

함의: 중국 경기 둔화로 전자제품 및 기계에 대한 수입이 8% 하락, 독일과 한국이 이례적 무역 적자를 기록허고 있음.

Coinbase Global Inc. is facing a US probe into whether it improperly let Americans trade digital assets that should have been registered as securities, according to three people familiar with the matter. The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s scrutiny of Coinbase has increased since the platform expanded the number of tokens in which it offers trading, said two of the people, who asked not to be named because the inquiry hasn’t been disclosed publicly. The probe by the SEC’s enforcement unit predates the agency’s investigation into an alleged insider trading scheme that led the regulator last week to sue a former Coinbase manager and two other people. As the largest US trading platform, Coinbase lets Americans trade more than 150 tokens. If those products were deemed securities, the firm could need to register as an exchange with the SEC. Coinbase has repeatedly sparred with the agency over how it oversees the industry, and the firm last week called on the SEC to propose clearer rules. Meanwhile, after taking a relatively cautious approach for years, Coinbase has boosted its token offerings. 

함의: 코인베이스에 거래 된 자산 중 일부가 증권의 성격을 가져 증권거래위원회에 신고 및 등록되었어야 함에도 그렇게 하지 않고 거래하게 했다는 명목으로 조사를 받게 될 것으로 보임.

Oil advanced for a second session as signs of a tight physical crude market offset concerns about an economic slowdown. West Texas Intermediate futures rose to trade near $98 a barrel amid a broader rally in commodities after gaining 2.1% on Monday. Time spreads are indicating scarce supply, and Morgan Stanley said the market remains tight, although the investment bank trimmed its crude oil price forecasts this year and into 2023 citing reduced demand projections. “There are clear supply issues facing the market, which will keep the oil balance tight for the remainder of the year,” said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING Groep NV in Singapore. Investors are “dealing with plenty of uncertainty and trying to find direction.”

함의: 수요 둔화 우려로 많은 전문가들이 예상치를 조정했지만, 부족한 공급 이슈가 연말까지 수급 불균형을 만들 것으로 예상되며 원유는 이틀째 상승함.

A Regime-Shift In the Fed’s Reaction Function. 75-basis-point rate hike at the Fed’s meeting this week is more or less a done deal. The outlook from then on is harder to predict. With the economy cooling rapidly, traders expect the Fed to pause its rate-hike cycle after this year. Bloomberg Economics believe market participants have underpriced the amount of tightening needed to tame inflation, the Fed’s current priority. Bloomberg Economics expects a steeper and higher path for the fed funds rate than what’s currently priced in the market. We believe the fed funds rate will reach 3.75%-4.0% by the end of the year, compared to market expectations of 3.25%-3.5%. Most traders expect the Fed to keep rates at that level until mid-2023. We expect the central bank to continue hiking until the upper end of the target-rate range reaches 5% in mid-2023 -- up from 4% in our previous forecast.

함의: 시장은 인플레이션 통제를 위한 중앙은행의 행동을 과소평가하고 있으며, 연말까지 3.75%~4.0%, 그리고 내년 중반까지 5%까지(이전 예상은 4%) 금리인상을 멈추지 않을 것으로 봄.

The Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes are wearing out their welcome in bond markets, with a measure of the yield curve that Chair Jerome Powell has highlighted as a recession indicator sending out a warning message. The difference between rates on where three-month bills are now and where they will be in 18 months has tumbled about 95 basis points in July, the biggest monthly decline in data starting in 1996. A vast swathe of the US yield curve inverted in recent weeks as recession fears spurred investors to pile into longer maturities. That spread peaked soon after his comments, and is now dropping fast enough to fall below zero at some stage in the next month. “Rates markets pricing in 2023 Fed rate cuts imply the market is expecting the Fed to pivot on rising recession risks,” said Prashant Newnaha, a strategist at TD Securities in Singapore.

함의: 채권 시장 참여자들은 중앙은행의 정책 방향에 정면으로 반대하고 있으며, 그 결과로 1996년 데이터 산정 이후 월간 기준 최대 스프레드(3개월물의 현재와 18개월 뒤 차이) 낙폭을 만들면서 역전도 가능한 기세로 움직이고 있음.

Optimism that inflation may start to slow and the Fed will become less hawkish has buoyed growth stocks. The MSCI Europe Growth index is up more than 7% in July, spurred by a surge in tech, which outperformed cyclical, value and defensive peers. "The turn in interest rates suggests that the recent better performance of growth style over value can continue," said JPMorgan strategists led by Mislav Matejka.

함의: 어느 국면에서든 거시경제 변수가 투자 스타일의 성과를 좌우함.

European Union countries reached a political agreement to cut their gas use by 15% through next winter as the prospect of a full cut-off from Russian supplies grows increasingly likely. Energy ministers meeting in Brussels gave the green light to a proposal to voluntarily cut their gas usage over the next months, the Czech presidency of the EU said in a post on Twitter. The plan makes the 15% target mandatory under an emergency situation -- such as a severe disruption to flows from Russia -- albeit with certain opt-outs for particularly vulnerable nations or those integral to the bloc’s network as a whole. Hungary was the only country that voted against the rules, Luxembourg’s energy minister Claude Turmes tweeted. 

함의: 비상상황에서 가스 사용량 15% 감축이 합의에 도달했으며, 유일한 반대표를 던진 곳은 헝가리였음.

This Thursday we get the preliminary reading of 2Q GDP, and it’s possible that the reading will be negative. If it’s negative, then that’s two in a row. And then we’ll get a big fight about whether that should be called a recession or not. There are basically two views on this question, but I will point out one thing. With every recession since the end of WWII, the US unemployment rate was either climbing prior to the declared recession, or it rose during the period where a recession was declared. That’s not the case in the first half of 2022.

함의: 이번에도 경제성장률이 마이너스일 경우 침체라 불러야할지 아닌지 치열할 것이지만, 2차 세계대전 이후 침체 전 항상 실업률이 먼저 높아졌으나 올해는 그렇지 않음.

IMF Cuts World GDP Outlook a Third Time as Inflation. The International Monetary Fund cut its global growth outlook for this year and next, warning that the world economy may soon be on the cusp of an outright recession. Global economic expansion will likely slow to 3.2% this year, less than the 3.6% forecast by the fund in April and the 4.4% seen in January, the IMF said in an update to its World Economic Outlook released Tuesday. 

함의: 경제성장률 하향을 여러 번 하게됨.

The Kremlin is likely to keep vital gas flows to Europe at minimal levels as long as the standoff over Ukraine continues, ratcheting up the pressure on the European Union over its tough stance on Russia’s invasion, according to people familiar with the leadership’s thinking. If the squeeze drags into the winter, it could leave the continent, traditionally Russia’s largest export market, desperately short of the fuel.

함의: 러시아는 우크라이나 침공에 맞서는 유럽을 에너지를 볼모로 계속 위협할 것임.