Market Updates.

Global equity markets have been on the back foot so far this week as coronavirus infections and deaths in India continue to rise.

As we highlighted in the Weekly Market Summary, the markets’ attention at the start of this week was firmly on yesterday’s (Tuesday 13 April 2021) US CPI inflation reading following last week’s large jump in US PPI inflation.

As we speculated in the Weekly Market Summary, the reaction to last Friday’s stunning US employment data has been positive with most of the major equity markets showing gains on the week (with equity markets closed on Friday and Monday for Easter, we had to wait until Tuesday to see how the market would react).

Although it is a shortened week thanks to the Easter holiday, it has already been filled with action – and we can expect plenty more as the week goes on.

We had hoped that this week’s joint testimony to the House of Financial Services Committee by the Fed Chair, Jay Powell, and US Treasury Secretary and former Fed Chair, Janet Yellen, would help equity markets, but it turned out to be a complete anti-climax as they both simply repeated their recent comments that the economic recovery is in its infancy and as such, monetary and fiscal support will remain firmly in place.

Global equity markets have, by and large, traded sideways so far this week ahead of monetary policy meetings at the Fed, BoE and BoJ.

Progress with the $1.9tr US fiscal package coupled with better-than-expected Chinese trade data has helped push equity markets higher so far this week.

Although it has been a quiet week so far for economic data, it has been a volatile couple of days for global equity markets.

Economic data releases have been light so far this week given a number of markets have been closed.

Global equity markets continue to move higher given the potential reflation of the global economy