• The Forex market is relatively quiet ahead of today’s scheduled monetary policy release from the Bank of England, which is expected to see the Bank raise its base rate by 0.50% to 1.75%. Markets will also be interested to hear whether the Bank’s inflation forecast will change. Currently, the Australian and New Zealand Dollars are the strongest major currencies.

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• The S&P 500 Index rose again yesterday, continuing a weeks-long rally to approach a 2-month high price. Although the US is in recession according to the commonly accepted definition, the body which officially declares whether the US in is recession has not yet done so, probably because consumer demand and job creation seem healthy enough to suggest a relatively soft landing.
• BTC/USD has resumed its very slow, weak upwards trend of previous weeks, being held by a bullish price channel.
• The price of WTI Crude Oil remains in a firm downtrend, with the price trading as low as $90 per barrel
• Yesterday’s release of US ISM Services PMI data showed a buoyant US services sector.
• Fed Member Kashkari stated that the US will be unable to reduce inflation to its 2% target for years, giving a more pessimistic outlook which is not shared by the Fed as a consensus.
• Daily new coronavirus cases globally dropped last week for the second consecutive week, reversing the earlier trend of an increasing number of confirmed cases.
• It is estimated that 67% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 7.4% of the global population is confirmed to have contracted the virus at some time, although the true number is highly likely to be much larger.  
• Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 584.3 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.10%.  
• The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be most significantly increasing in Iran, Japan, South Korea, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. 

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