HomeWorld NewsDisturbing war leaves markets in chaos, mediocre GDP data in Europe

Disturbing war leaves markets in chaos, mediocre GDP data in Europe

The ongoing combat hostilities between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the recently erupted war have seen devastating effects on markets in the past 24 hours. The price of the Ruble spiked to 89 for a single USD dollar and is now currently at slightly above 82 RUB per 1 USD.

Markets opened higher today as possibilities of less harsher sanctions are on the table and as a ceasefire could be considered. Leading British benchmark FTSE 100 opened 1.1% higher during morning tradeing. It had slumped nearly 4% on Thursday.

The U.S. Money market is noticeably moving from growth towards value stocks as 2.61 Billion Dollars US worth of stock were sold with 537$ million going into value stocks on the other hand.

Financial shares, as well as tech oriented ones, lost 1.07$ billion and 0.87$ billion respectively.

Precious metals rose 4.3%, led by a recovery in Russia-exposed miners Polymetal, EVRAZ and Petropavlovsk, which gained between 3% and 20%.

Both West Texas Oil and the Brent sort went above the 100 USD price mark. The OPEC+ group does not plan to increase production even despite the US’s intention to open its’ strategic reserves if they do not do so.

The FED released the Monetary Policy report for February.

Economic activity and the labor market. In the second half of 2021, gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed somewhat from its brisk first-half pace but nevertheless rose at a solid annualized rate of 4.6 percent. Average monthly job gains remained robust at 575,000 in the second half. The unemployment rate has plummeted almost 2 percentage points since June and, at 4 percent in January, has reached the median of FOMC participants’ estimates of its longer-run normal level.

The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 5.percent over the 12 months ending in December, and the index that excludes food and energy items (so-called core inflation) was up 4.9 percent—the highest readings for both measures in roughly 40 years.

Germany released GDP data for the last quarter of 2021.

The gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021 on the third quarter of 2021 upon adjustment for price, seasonal and calendar variations. After economic performance had increased again last summer despite growing delivery bottlenecks and material shortages, the recovery of the German economy came to a halt at the end of the year due to the fourth virus wave and another reinforcement of preventive measures. According to figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the GDP development was however more positive than reported in the first release of 28 January 2022, both regarding the fourth quarter (-0.3%) and the entire year of 2021 (+2.9%). The results were revised accordingly. GDP was down 1.1% in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, the quarter before the health crisis began.

Preliminary GDP data from France for the last quarter of 2021 released as well.

In Q4 2021, GDP grew by 0.7 % and overtook by 0.9% its pre-crisis level (when compared to its level in Q4 2019). On average over the year, the economic activity rebounded strongly : +7.0% in 2021 after -8.0% in 2020. This estimate of the annual growth and of other annual aggregates by the sum of the four quarters will be consolidated at the end of may 2022 with the publication of the provisory account for 2021.

The different contributions to the GDP’s growth are relatively homogeneous this quarter. The interior demand (excluding stock) contributed to its growth by +0.5 points, after +3.5 points in the previous quarter: it can be noted that the growth rate of households’ consumption expenditures (+0.5% after +5.5%) was similar to the one from the total gross fixed capital formation GFCF (+0.6% after 0.0%).

Foreign trade, which remained in a recovery state, grew faster than the interior demand. The increase is more marked for imports (+3.9% after +1.0%) than for exports (+3.1% after +1.7%). Thus, the contribution of foreign trade to the GDP’s growth was slightly negative this quarter: -0.3 points after +0.2 points in Q3. Finally, the contribution of the inventory changes to GDP growth was positive this quarter (+0.5 points after -0.6 points in Q3 2021).

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