The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the US Federal Reserve System (the Fed) will be heading into its fifth monetary-policy meeting for the year on July 30, with markets keenly eyeing the outcome, in spite of the majority of market indicators already pricing in a rate cut.
The pound sterling fell to 27-month lows against the greenback on July 16, after Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, frontrunners to succeed outgoing UK Prime Minister Theresa May, hardened their Brexit pitches over the Irish backstop.
Germany’s seasonally adjusted retail-sales figure surged 3.3 percent month-on-month in January to its highest level since October 2016, rebounding sharply from a downwardly revised -3.1 percent in December, according to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany.
The unemployment rate in the United States climbed to 4.0 percent in January, the highest since June 2018 and marginally higher than the 3.9 percent recorded in December of last year.
There have been 22 federal government shutdowns in the United States since 1979, with three last year alone, including the most recent 35-day partial shutdown, which came into effect on December 22, 2018. Considered the longest in US history
China’s factory orders fell for the second month in a row, with the Caixin/Markit Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) indicating further contraction in the country’s manufacturing activity in January.
Brazil’s current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $0.82 billion in December 2018 from $2.07 billion a year earlier on the back of a widening trade surplus in goods, even as the country’s services industry recorded an annual deficit.
The pound sterling rebounded from its April 2017 low after the Brexit deal of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party was defeated by a record margin of 230 votes in the House of Commons on January 3 of this year.
The manufacturing sector in the United States slowed for the second straight month, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM’s) PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) survey in October.
Japan’s international-trade balance jumped to a whopping ¥139.56-billion surplus in September, after registering two successive months of deficits. The trade numbers came in better than Street expectations of a ¥50-billion deficit but narrowed considerably from the ¥654-billion surplus