Summary:
- Global stocks under pressure at the end of a bad week
- Oil also falling lower with Oil.WTI back below $60
- NOK falls further as core inflation misses
- Sharp reversal in CAD after latest jobs data
- Ripple the pick of the crypto markets
Monday’s sharp drop in stocks will be remembered for quite some time as the speed of the decline and explosion higher in volatility (VOLX on xStation) shocked global markets. The middle of the week looked somewhat more upbeat as indices such as the US500 and DE30 looked to recover but today’s trade has seen the sellers push ahead once more.
Itls also been a bad week for crude bulls with Oil.WTI and Brent Oil both experiencing large declines. Oil.WTI has fallen below $60 a barrel for the first time this year this afternoon and the market is currently lower by around 8% on the week. This is the largest drop in percentage terms since April of last year and the largest in terms of points since December 2016.
The Norwegian Krona is sensitive to the price of oil due to the country’s large production of crude, and this hasn’t helped NOK’s plight today. Also weighing on the currency is the latest inflation figures from Norway with the core reading falling short of expectations. Core inflation dropped in January to 1.1% from 1.4% in a year-over-year basis while the consensus had indicated an increase to 1.5%.
The Canadian jobs data release, caused some wild swings in the Canadian dollar which first dropped sharply before recovering the entire fall and actually moving higher on the day. The initial reaction saw the market rush to sell CAD as the headline employment number fell sharply to -88k from 78.6k previously. As further details of the report were digested by the markets this selling in CAD was stopped in its tracks and the entire move higher in USDCAD of 80 pips was first erased, before the pair moved lower to fall back below the 1.26 handle.
In the crypto space it’s been a good day for Ripple with the market soaring higher by around 15% to trade back near 0.88. Today we’re going to mention a really interesting story from Russia which could be viewed as a real threat to construction in some areas. Namely, the top storey of the building in Russia, Artem near Vladivostok, was completely destroyed by the fire while many of other flats were flooded in the wake of water from firefighters. It’s believed that the main cause behind the catastrophe was… Bitcoin mining, to be precise a resident who was illegally using the block’s electricity in order to mine the cryptocurrency.