Financial markets were hoping to hear something from the European Central Bank and its president Marie Draghi after today’s policy meeting about extending the bank’s current 80 billion euros ($88 billion) a month program of asset buying behind its current March 2017 expiration. Instead all financial markets heard was Draghi promise that the bank wouldn’t put an abrupt end to asset purchases in March
For me the question today was whether the market would look like the “vulnerable” market of the first four days of last week–you know when U.S. stocks moved lower, the dollar continued to climb but so did the yen, and emerging market equities fell and it looked like we were moving back to a typical risk-off market–or whether Friday’s strong day for U.S. stocks broke the pattern.
U.S. stocks stabilized today–thanks to better than expected earnings from Citigroup (C) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and, well, Friday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index closed up 0.02%. U.S. crude oil benchmark West Texas Intermedite fell 0.24% but remained above $50 a barrel at $50.32. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF finished ahead by 0.16%
It’s not like U.S. stocks didn’t have enough to worry about today. For the day the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index closed at 2136.73, off by 1.24%. That was enough to push the S&P 500 below the 50-day moving average. The index has been flirting with that support level since early September. Maybe in this context the warnings issued today by Wall Street technical analysts feel like piling on–or maybe they are exactly what they seem, that is warnings
The financial markets are gradually convincing themselves that the Federal Reserve is certain to raise interest rates at its December 14 meeting. That, along with the continued retreat in the pound on remarks from U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May signaling a hard Brexit, sent the U.S. dollar to its biggest gain in two weeks. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index climbed by 0.6% this morning.
In the second quarter the U.S. economy grew by an annualized 1.2% instead of the 2.6% forecast by economists at the end of last week. This follows on 0.8% growth in the first quarter.
“It now seems plausible that uncertainty could remain elevated for some time,” Mark Carney, head of the Bank of England said today in his second televised speech since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. “The economic outlook has deteriorated and some monetary policy easing will likely be needed over the summer”
Any post-Brexit crisis will will be a slow motion crisis driven by a gradual slowdown in economic growth in the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, China and the United States that results in a dimming of prospects for corporate earnings growth. The crisis will be interrupted periodically, as it has been in the last two days, by the hope that this time central banks will be able to intervene and get this or that economy growing again
