Inflation woes eased a tad as the consumer price gauge favored by the Fed, the PCE deflator, was unchanged last month at 6.3%. Personal income growth was static but real personal spending fell 0.4%, a major concern for recession worriers.
Stocks threw in the towel after the report and ahead of quarter-end rebalancing as an ugly first half comes to a close. The cash S&P is set for its biggest first-half decline since 1970 and the Nasdaq since 2002; both slumped after the open.
President Joe Biden said he’ll ask US allies in the Persian Gulf region to boost oil production when he meets with them during a trip to Saudi Arabia next month, one of the key avenues he has to address surging inflation costs at home.
The S&P dropped again, sealing its worst first half since 1970. Ten-year US yields briefly slipped below 3% after US consumer spending fell for the first time this year.
Chinese equities are back in vogue. A Bloomberg survey of 19 fund managers and analysts predicts that benchmark indexes in China and Hong Kong will post gains of at least 4% by year-end, outperforming global peers. About 70% of those polled plan to maintain or bolster holdings of shares in the next three months. Investors are also piling into the largest US-listed ETF tracking Chinese stocks, which lured $333 million on Wednesday.
The nearly 60% drawdown in Bitcoin since the end of March is the largest since the third quarter of 2011. The currency fell to around $19,000, and crypto stocks dropped; tellingly, the only digital-asset investment vehicle not to shrink in June was a fund betting against Bitcoin.
Michael Burry, the founder of Scion Asset Management who was made famous by Christian Bale in the movie “The Big Short,” said on Twitter that the first half declines in equity markets this year were “multiple compression” and following this will be earnings compression.
President Xi Jinping was expected to swear in Hong Kong’s new, security-minded leader in a ceremony to mark 25 years of Chinese rule, after declaring that the Asian financial hub had been “reborn” in the wake of a crackdown on the pro-democracy opposition.
The IMF’s latest data on global FX reserves show the yen’s unshakeable status (for now) as a reserve currency. FX reserve managers sold euros, dollars and pounds in the first quarter and bought more yen than any other currencies reported in the IMF’s latest data released Thursday.
S&P 500 futures have kicked off July in the same bearish tone that has prevailed throughout 2022. Traders looking for stocks to slide further in the third quarter will be encouraged by the ongoing pattern of modest rallies followed by longer declines.
Ten-Year Treasury Yield Falls Below 3% as Recession Fears Mount. Treasuries began the second half of the year on the front foot Friday as concerns continued to mount that Federal Reserve rate hikes will lead to a recession.
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to transfer rights to the Sakhalin-2 natural gas project to a new Russian company, a move that could force foreign owners including Shell Plc to abandon their investment in the facility.
Global companies have pulled more debt sales in the past six months than in all of 2020. More than 70 deals have been postponed or canceled so far in 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s compared with 37 during the full year of 2021, and 67 in 2020.
After attracting crypto firms, property investors and Russian billionaires, Dubai is drawing a new crowd: hedge fund managers. Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management has grown its staff in the Dubai International Financial Centre to about 30 since securing a license in 2020. Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint Capital Management, one of the largest multi-strategy hedge funds in the world, registered in the DIFC in June, according to a filing.
Global oil prices could reach a “stratospheric” $380 a barrel if US and European penalties prompt Russia to inflict retaliatory crude-output cuts, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts warned.