Market Insights Week 49
Date – 05th Dec’22
As we are heading towards the final stretch of the year, the recovery in financial market got decent boost with US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell confirmation about smaller interest-rate hikes and with the jobs consistency in the weakened U.S. economy. November became the fourth consecutive month when U.S. job market gained more than 200,000 jobs in a month and apparently, it added 263k more new jobs last month.
Let us highlight some of the major movements of the last week:
- Monday started the week on a weak note but the big rally for U.S. stocks on Wednesday changed the overall week for the global market.
- The S&P 500 added 1% and the technology-heavy NASDAQ gained around 2% over the week.
- The “traditional economy” DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) rose by 82.85 points to close the week at 34,429.88, which is up by more than 20% from its October low and down only about 5% from its all-time high.
- The yield of the 10-year US treasury bond tumbled to settle around 3.51% on Friday, low from the prior week of 3.69%.
- In November, the US depreciated almost 5% against a basket of other major currencies which is its worst month since 2010.
- The VIX (Equity Volatility index) plunged last month to reach back to its historical average of 20 from the March peak of 36.
- Europe share market also rose for 7th consecutive week and the pan-European STOXX Europe 600 Index closed 0.58% higher last week.
- France’s CAC 40 Index added 0.44% whereas, Germany’s DAX Index was almost flat.
- The UK’s FTSE 100 Index grew 0.93% however Italy’s FTSE MIB Index lost 0.39% over the last week.
- Japanese equity market couldn’t enjoy the uptrend and were negative for the week. The Nikkei 225 fell 1.79% and the broader TOPIX went down 3.17%.
- The Japanese currency Yen strengthened against the USD to its highest level in over three months to reach JPY 134.5 from around JPY 139.1.
- The yield on the 10-yr Japanese Government bond moved little and broadly remained unchanged at 0.25%.
- As Beijing moved closer to fully reopening the economy, Chinese stocks rose and the blue-chip CSI 300 Index climbed 2.5% over the last week.
Investors across the globe will be waiting for the outcome of US Federal meeting, scheduled to conclude on Wednesday next week. However, on Tuesday of this week, U.S. Census bureau is expected to publish trade balance data which is crucial. Apart from this, data on Consumer credit, Producer Price Index and wholesale inventories are expected later this week.
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