Week in a glance: second peak, USA vs China, more money

2020년 6월 1일

The main event of the past week in terms of a pandemic is the formation of a new peak in the number of new cases. That is, the fear of the second wave is replaced by the reality of the second peak. Which of these is worse is hard to say. The second wave did not become less likely because of this, but rather the opposite. So, in this regard, the situation is getting worse. A feature of the second peak is the change of leaders in diseases: developed countries were replaced by emerging countries. Brazil alone at the end of the week generated up to 30K new cases per day. Dynamics in India is also alarming, especially when you consider the information about the country's partial exit from the lockdown.

In general, the pandemic continues to be the number one concern in the world.

Although based on the dynamics of the Fear Index, the markets have not been worried about this at all. Which is more than strange given the potential consequences and their magnitude.

A partial explanation for the optimism was the news that the European Commission recommends the creation of an aid fund for the EU countries in the amount of 750 billion euros, as well as the news that Japan will spend another 1.1 trillion dollars to help the economy.

Throughout the past week, markets have been closely monitoring the confrontation between the US and China. The level of tension between the countries rose sharply, and on Friday following the press conference of Trump, everyone was afraid that he would impose sanctions on China and take the escalation to a brand new level. But Trump quite unexpectedly gave the rear, saying that the United States would put an end to the special regime in Hong Kong and did not begin to impose new sanctions on China, while maintaining a trade truce between the United States and China. Trump's softer stance is hard to imagine. So buyers in the stock markets, who were already getting ready to start taking profits, decided to postpone this.

Our position over the situation in the US stock market this week remains unchanged: only sales. Reasons: extremely gloomy economic present and even more gloomy economic future (US GDP for the second quarter according to experts' forecasts will decrease by 30-40%, and the earnings season promises to be the most disastrous in the history of the United States).

Some words about the economic present. Despite the increasingly active exit of the US economy from the lockdown, the number of unemployed continues to grow at 2+ million per week. That is, there is no any fast economic recovery.

Last week a sharp increase in oil reserves in the United States was detected. Recall that last week we closed most of our oil longs, as we expect a correction in the oil market. Buyers have clearly exhausted their potential, while there is something to fix in terms of profits.

The upcoming week is primarily interesting for data on the US labor market. NFP figures are traditionally interesting for markets, and in the current conditions this interest is naturally increased.

Since the Dollar Index last week consolidated below an important support level, while it is below 99, we will look for opportunities for dollar sales in the FOREX. First of all, against the euro (while it is above 1.10), as well as the Japanese yen (while it is below 108). Accordingly, we will buy EURUSD and sell USDJPY today.