Morning wrap (19.05.2023)

• Wall Street indices rallied for another day. S&P 500 gained 0.94%, Dow Jones gained 0.34% and Nasdaq surged 1.51%. Russell 2000 added 0.58%

• US President Biden said that negotiator teams are making a steady progress on debt ceiling

• Meanwhile, US Vice President Harriss and White House economic adviser Brainard warned that US debt default could trigger a recession

• Indices from Asia-Pacific traded mixed today - Nikkei and Kospi gained 0.8%, S&P/ASX 200 moved 0.6% higher, Nifty 50 dropped 0.2% and indices from China traded mostly lower

• European index futures point to a higher opening of the European cash session today

• DAX futures (DE30) briefly traded above 16,300 pts and painted fresh record highs earlier today

• G7 leaders will discuss new sanctions on Russian diamond trade as well as on countries that help Russia circumvent sanctions

• Reuters reports that Chinese state banks have intervened on the market to support falling yuan

• Japanese CPI inflation accelerated from 3.2 to 3.5% YoY in April (exp. 3.5% YoY). Core CPI inflation (ex-food) accelerated from 3.1 to 3.4% YoY (exp. 3.4%). So-called core-core CPI inflation (ex-food and energy) accelerated from 3.8 to 4.1% YoY

• New Zealand's trade balance for April reached NZ$427 million (exp. -NZ$235 million)

• Cryptocurrencies are trading mixed - Bitcoin drops 0.3%, Dogecoin trades 0.1% lower, Ripple adds 0.4% and Litecoin rallies 1.5%

• Energy commodities trade mixed - oil gains 0.7-0.8% while US natural gas prices drop 0.6%

• Precious metals trade higher - gold gains 0.2%, platinum adds 0.3% while silver and palladium gain 0.6% each

• AUD and JPY are the best performing major currencies while EUR and GBP lag the most

Japanese yen is one of the best performing G10 currencies today following a beat in CPI data for April. USDJPY is pulling back and looking towards a test of a recently-broken resistance zone at 138.00. Source: xStation5