London Open
An explosive start to the week with U.S. and European equity futures trading well in the green and with oil prices stabilizing, that too is providing a primary pipeline for "risk-on" to gush this morning in Europe.
Extremely encouraging virus infection statistics from around the world see investors throw their weight behind the COVID-19 flattening curve.
A few more of these sessions and we could nearly believe the crisis is over albeit Trump warning of more doom to come and Jamie Dimon heralding in a Bad Recession both echoing that a 2008 crisis lies ahead.
Japan, HK, and Singapore are all up 1-2%. Australia is the only place where we started well but drifted lower. But that was prior to the rather risk-friendly RBA meeting.
The benign conditions in the equity markets are just what the doctor ordered for the FX markets and are triggering an unwind of long USD risk-off hedge positions, which is adding to the positive vibe.
In a further signal that the new daily case curve is flattening in Korea, 47 cases were reported for April 6, the third consecutive daily decline, and the fourth straight sub-100 day. Current guidelines on social distancing are in place until April 19.
In the UK, the debate on weighing the economic and social vs. healthcare costs is beginning to divide the top of government. And the timing for this hasty politically destabilizing debate is pretty poor with Prime Minister Johnson in ICU lockdown with coronavirus. Both counts continue to hold back the pound's bullish ambitions.