I have entered very recently to Hive posting dynamic, but I’d like to follow quickly on one my interests here, that is to share ideas and news on the way global finance are moving nowadays. I am a curious market watcher, and so I’d like to insert myself in the discussions that the very active Leo community advances everyday through podcasts, newsletters and other original content types.
For being connected to real time news on the reffered topic I assume sound and respected wire services such as Reuters —for me, the best news agency in the World to follow finance trends—, or exclusive and premium information posted in sites the likes of Financial Times or Wall Street Journal (by the way, it will be a real punch in the table to have some day our own Hive sources or journalists, engaging in original news content creation. All in Web3 environment).
I’ve noticed in some discussions on Leo’s posts that people still don’t understand why it’s impossible to follow the global market unless you factor in the US variable. That’s the way the world economy still plays out, including in that basket the value of our crypto wallets.
As I pointed out in my Hive intro, I pretend in the medium term to follow the lead of newsletters like The Daily Leo or the one carefully curated by @preparedwombat, but introducing hispanic sources —maybe with a more regional approach, for example working with Latin American issues and events—. Spanish language content production in this and others social spaces is almost always at disadvantage, too far from state of the art.
Global finance last trends
AP service exposes that stocks fell broadly on Wall Street because of the Federal Reserve last statement, that strengthened the US dollar.
The S&P 500 fell 2.8% as of 2:16 p.m. Eastern, with roughly 95% of stocks in the benchmark index in the red. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 901 points, or 2.7%, to 33,064 and the Nasdaq fell 3.4%. The slide erased all the weekly gains for the major indexes.
There was some excitement in November upon a signal from Jerome Powell —Fed Chair— that an opportunity window was open for a more flexible approach. It seems the same window is closed for now, with the seventh increase on this 2022 of the short-term interest rate the Fed manages. And yet some analysis explain that there are disturbing signals in the Fed stance. Here you have one extracted from recent Financial Times article:
The mix of grim predictions and slowing interest rate rises left some frustrated. “Either you believe your policy stance is ‘not sufficiently restrictive’ or you believe it is close enough that a [0.25 percentage point] hike is on the table for February,” said Steve Blitz, chief US economist at TS Lombard. “You cannot believe both.”
The same approach is replicated by Reuters columnist Jamie McGeever:
Powell's comments are pushing Wall Street lower on Thursday, but interest rate markets largely have dismissed them and continue to price in more than 50 bps of rate cuts next year.
(...)
"The hawks may have come out to play, but markets continue to disobey," said Investec's Ellie Henderson, who along with Zentner at Morgan Stanley, expects the Fed to raise rates by only 25 bps in February before cutting in the fourth quarter.
This Wall Street Journal piece and this from Financial Times expose similar arguments.
Continuing with the core of the review, AP reports that Europe banks did the homework too with their own rate increases:
Central banks in Europe followed along Thursday, with the European Central Bank, Bank of England and Swiss National Bank each raising their main lending rate by a half-point Thursday. European stocks fell sharply, with Germany's DAX dropping 3.3%.
In the gold market, the last 24 hours have not seeing major developments, as Reuters reports:
Gold prices were flat on Friday and set for a weekly loss, pressured by expectations of higher interest rates for a longer period by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Spot gold was steady at $1,776.85 per ounce as of 0028 GMT, having fallen more than 1% this week. U.S. gold futures were down 0.1% at $1,786.80.
(...)
Although gold is traditionally known as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainties, higher interest rates tend to dim the bullion’s appeal as it increases the opportunity cost of holding the non-yielding metal.
On the cryptoverse
Based on data provided by Nansen —blocked to the Cuban audience, by the way— and Cryptoquant, Muyao Shen from Bloomberg observes:
The net outflow, the difference between the value of crypto coming into and leaving the exchange, was around $239 million in the past 24 hours, according to Nansen. (...) That’s down from the daily average of $272 million over the past week (...)
Data from researcher CryptoQuant show similar trends for Bitcoin flows on Binance. About 3,279 Bitcoin were withdrawn on Wednesday, down from a record high of 40,353 just two days ago.
On the Sam Bankman-Fried extended version saga, reports eruded late Thrusday on a new bail application from SBF after losing first request. In another long form piece of reporting we see a detailed guide for understanding the SBF case probe, and in this WaPo article we are sumerged in the relation between FTX and Washington politics.
Thanks for getting here and catch you up in the comments section.