The BoE delivered its twelfth straight rate increase and kept the door open to more moves with typically vague communication, while upgrading its GDP and inflation forecasts

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), consumer prices in China rose by just 0.1% in April from a year ago, the lowest rate of inflation in two years. This suggests that there is weakness in domestic demand and raises questions about the strength of the economic rebound.

Headline CPI for April came in a t 4.9% y/y, modestly lower than the 5% y/y expected. Core inflation which strips out volatile items such as food and energy printed at 5.5% y/y which was slightly lower than the previous 5.6% y/y. The month-on-month figures for headline and core were 0.4% respectively, which equates to 4.9% annualised. This is still much higher than the Fed’s target of 2%.

President Joe Biden and congressional leaders failed to reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday. The leaders agreed to meet again at the end of the week to continue negotiations. The Treasury Department and budget experts have warned that a bill must be signed by early June to avoid the U.S. defaulting on its debts, which could have catastrophic economic…

Watch today’s US Open for commentary on EUR/USD and NAS100 after Friday’s strong US jobs report and ahead of the US CPI inflation report, Apple’s outlook after its recent quarterly results and more

According to a Federal Reserve report released on Monday, mid-sized institutions' turmoil led to banks tightening their lending standards to households and businesses, which could pose a threat to the US economic growth. The report, called the Senior Loan Officer Opinion survey, revealed that banks had made it tougher to get commercial and industrial loans, mortgages, home equity lines of credit, and credit cards. Respondents expect the situation to persist…

The NFP showed higher average hourly earnings and a lower unemployment rate than expected. The FOMC statement suggests a pause, the RBA delivered a surprise rate hike and the ECB increased rates by a smaller increment. This week we get CPI data on Wednesday and the BoE is expected to increase its official bank rate by 25bps. Disney is set to release results this week and Friday delivers UK GDP…

The US central bank (Fed) and its European counterpart (ECB) adopted very different monetary policy approaches after the failure of SVB and the divergence persisted after this week’s latest decisions, as the stress in the banking sector persists

Watch today’s US Open for commentary on the latest policy decisions by the Fed that hinted to a pause and the ECB, which moderated the pace of tightening, but pointed to more rate hikes

The US central bank hiked rates by another 0.25% to what could be the terminal level, but did take more moves off the table, balancing between financial stress and persistent inflation

The bond market's recession indicator has been signalling an incoming downturn for several months, which could start this quarter. This is based on the inverted Treasury yield curves, specifically the spread between the 2-10 yields, and the spread between the 3-month and 10-year yields.