• The Jackson Hole symposium of central bankers begins today, with a speech from Fed Chair Powell commencing proceedings. The speech and hints on monetary policy it contains will be keenly watched as a strong US Dollar has been driving markets over recent days and weeks.

• The US Dollar has begun to sell off from its recent peak, leading to speculation that we may see a more hawkish policy tilt from Powell lead to a “buy the rumor, sell the fact” situation with the greenback.
• Despite the minor selloff in the US Dollar, 2-year US treasury yields are continuing to rise and are not far from their long-term high reached earlier this year.
• Global stock markets have risen over the past day, partly due to new stimulus measures announced by China, although the Chinese stock market is suffering a down day. The S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq 100 Index are trading higher, as is the European DAX.
• In the Forex market, the US Dollar is the weakest major currency, while the Australian and New Zealand Dollars are the strongest, over the short-term. However, there is a valid bullish long-term technical trend in the US Dollar which may well reassert itself, especially in the EUR/USD and GBP/USD currency pairs which broke to new long-term lows earlier this week. The US Dollar Index remains close to a 20-year high.
• Today will see the release of US Preliminary GDP data, which will give further indication as to whether the US is in a recession, and how strong it is if so.
• Daily new coronavirus cases globally dropped last week for the fifth consecutive week.
• It is estimated that 67.5% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 7.6% 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 603.5 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.07%.  
• The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be most significantly increasing in Japan and South Korea. 

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