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Market volatility has been reasonably subdued in recent weeks, despite acute event (and macro data) risk in the next four weeks, including of course US presidential elections on 3rd November, and a number of significant macro, policy and geopolitical developments. In the past month volatility in major developed and emerging market currencies versus the US Dollar has only risen materially
Read moreWe are sticking to our forecast, first set out in Shape of Recovery: Square Root & Hockey Stick (5th June 2020) that global GDP, which contracted about 7.0% qoq in Q2 (a number flattered by China’s GDP), will rise a record-high 3.0% qoq in Q3. However, this implies that world GDP will still only be at the level which prevailed
Read moreThe United States’ post-war record GDP contraction in Q2 of 9.5% qoq and the Dollar’s recent depreciation have been making headline news but some perspective is required. The US GDP contracted about 10.6% in H1 2020, far more than in China (+0.6%) and South Korea (-4.6%). However, of other economies which have so far released Q2 data – including the
Read morePrice action in major currencies was again subdued last week. With few tier-one macro data releases for markets to trade off the focus was on the reaction function of governments and central banks to covid-19 related developments. Only a handful of currencies appreciated by more than 1% vs the Dollar last week and no major currency depreciated by more than
Read moreMajor currencies, equity markets and the price of crude oil since 8th June – the cycle low in the US Dollar – have exhibited reasonably limited directionality, narrow trading ranges and very low volatility, with the notable exception of currencies in Latin America. However this is not a case of more confident financial market participants finding their feet, in our
Read moreWhile GDP data for Q1 are now “old” and seemingly of limited use, it makes little sense to forecast global growth in Q2 and beyond without at least knowing the starting point. We estimate, based on data for 19 major economies, that global GDP growth slowed to -2.6% yoy in Q1 from +3.0% yoy in Q4 2019 and to -4.3%
Read moreWhile the United States and China have not gone as far as re-introducing or increasing tariffs on each others’ imports, the war of words between the two trading superpowers has clearly escalated with Hong Kong caught in the middle. In line with our expectations the Chinese Renminbi has depreciated versus (a weaker) Dollar and in nominal effective exchange rate terms
Read moreGlobal GDP growth, in year-on-year terms, slowed to -2.7% in Q12020 from +3.1% in Q4 2019 and in quarter-on-quarter terms to -4.5% from +0.6% in Q4, based on growth rates in 14 major economies accounting for close to 90% of world GDP. Global GDP growth in Q1 was at its weakest in over thirty years, at least in quarter-on-quarter terms.
Read moreForecasts of the scale of a likely global economic recession and the shape of the recovery often give little thought to the economic variables being measured or their timeliness. Based on 4X Global Research’s own quarterly global GDP series and its correlation with the global PMI Composite Index, we estimate that global GDP growth slowed to about 0.5% yoy in
Read moreWe argued in Lack of US market & macro volatility both reassuring and troubling (17 January) that “the market’s willingness to look through domestic political and geopolitical events suggests that only a significant exogenous or endogenous shock currently beyond markets’ radar screens (an “unknown unknown”) is likely to really move the needle”. That unknown unknown, a “black swan” event, has
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