Summary:

• European stocks try to recover after yesterday’s hit

• Swedish krone outperforms its major peers

• US GDP and inflation readings scheduled for the afternoon

The dust after yesterday’s rout on the global stock markets seem to have already settled. A wide recovery is observed across European blue chip benchmarks. However, in some countries like for example Poland the declines have deepened today. Swedish krone is the best currency amid G10 along with the New Zealand dollar. JPY, CHF and USD are the biggest losers after stellar gains registered yesterday. On the commodity front the situation is mixed as no general tendency can be drawn for any group of assets.

The prime reason for the stronger SEK is wage growth accelerating to 3.1% from 2.5% in year-over-year basis in March, the highest since July 2016. This gauge includes overtime pay albeit even when we strip it out wage growth remains solid showing a decent pick-up to 2.9% from 2.3% previously. Does this huge jump have a chance to be sustainable?

All eyes are on Italy, therefore it is easy to miss out on an opportunity emerging across cryptocurrencies. That kind of a chance might be noticed on Dash, though before we move to a technical view of this digital coin let us mention an interesting story coming from Australia.

Why are markets so obsessed about the Italy in the first place? We had various political risks and turmoils across Europe over the past few years and often the repercussions on the markets were less dramatic.

After two years of fighting Bayer has finally won approval for its Monsanto takeover. The deal is worth $66 billion and will result in creation of the world’s largest seed and agricultural chemicals provider.

Italian woes continue spreading over other markets, and it was perfectly seen on Wall Street yesterday where the SP500 and the Dow Jones registered their biggest one-day percentage drops in a month falling 1.2% and 1.6% respectively. Among the largest laggards there were financial stocks.