• There is a growing expectation that war between Russia and Ukraine may begin within the next few days. This is spiking the price of crude oil to new multi-year highs. WTI Crude Oil is trading close to $95. If fighting erupts, the price is likely to reach $100 per barrel quickly.

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• Asian stock markets are firmly lower over today’s session, again with the impact of war fears being felt.
• In addition to WTI Crude Oil, several agricultural commodities have been advancing to long-term high prices: corn, soybeans, and cotton. Such commodities tend to thrive in high-inflation environments such as we are seeing today, so will be attractive to trend traders as potential long trades.
• The cryptocurrency sector continues to look bearish after falling all week last week, with Bitcoin threatening to break below a key support level at $41,790.
• The Forex market is relatively quiet and is likely to remain that way today as it is a Monday and there are no real high-impact data releases scheduled, although Fed member Bullard will be speaking later. Over the short-term the euro is the strongest currency, while the New Zealand eollar is the weakest.
• The Reserve Bank of Australia will releases the minutes of its latest monetary policy meeting later today.
• Last Thursday saw the release of US CPI (inflation) data, which showed US inflation increasing at an annualized rate of 7.5%, the highest seen in 40 years and an overshoot of the 7.3% which was the consensus forecast.
• Daily new coronavirus cases globally seem to have peaked four weeks ago, suggesting that the omicron variant wave may have already peaked worldwide.
• It is estimated that 61.8% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination.
• Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 412.2 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.42%.
• The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing most quickly in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brunei, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Guatemala, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Jordan, South Korea, Latvia, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Oman, Russia, Slovakia, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, and the Ukraine.