Morning wrap (23.01.2025)

• After yesterday's great session on Wall Street, during which the Nasdaq 100 index rose almost 1.4%, the DJIA rose 0.3% and the S&P 500 rose another 0.6% today, US index futures traded slightly lower in pre-opening trade. Benchmarks from Europe are also losing, although volatility is very low
• In the Asian session, China's Hang Seng retreats another 0.6% today and has managed to erase much of the upward movement of January 13; Chinese index contracts are losing. The Nikkei gained nearly 0.8% thanks to the strength of technology companies, but South Korea's KOSPI retreats more than 1%.
• Precious metals are mostly losing, with palladium retreating the most, over 1% today. Gold is trading down slightly, after recent gains. Agricultural raw materials are trading slightly lower.
• NATGAS opened 12% lower after the rollback and has been losing slightly since. Oil also retreated nearly 1.5% following the rollback and has since been losing, Optimism in China has declined despite the latest comments from Chinese industry representatives and the central bank:

• PBoC Representative: "We will expand the scope and scale of liquidity tools to finance stock purchases at the appropriate time."

• Vice Chairman of the Chinese Financial Regulator: "We will encourage major state-owned insurers to allocate 30% of their newly generated premium incomes to stock investments."

• Chairman of the Chinese Securities Regulator: "Every year, state-owned insurance companies will provide at least hundreds of billions of yuan in new, long-term capital for the stock market."

• Chairman of the Chinese Securities Regulator: "The current dividend yield of the CSI 300 index has reached 3%, which is significantly higher than the yield on 10-year treasury bonds."

Change in U.S. crude inventories by API (in a million barrels): 1M vs. 2.6M previously

• Gasoline inventories: 3.2M vs. 5.39M previously
• Distillate stocks 1.9M vs. 4.88M previously
• Cushing oil reserves: 0.5M (Forecast -, Previous 0.573M)

• Bitcoin continues to trade lower, despite sizable purchases of ETFs in the US. Data indicated that during the last session, the BlackRock ETF (IBIT) alone made purchases of BTC worth more than $600 million (the largest this year), but this did not move the price. The worst performing cryptocurrency at the moment is Solana, which is trading almost 5% lower.
• Today, the Bank of Turkey will make rate decisions, so we may see more volatility on pairs with the lira. EURTRY is already gaining more than 0.5%. On the macro side, attention will focus on U.S. benefit claims (14:30). Financial results will be presented by General Electric, American Airlines (before the session) and Texas Instruments (after the session), among others.
• Shares of Kinder Morgan were up almost 1% in after market despite a weak Q4 2024 report. Operating income came in 1.1 billion vs almost 1.3 billion exp. Revenue came in at 3.98 billion vs 4.17 billion anticipated on Wall Street. Adjusted net income came in $708 million vs $771 million exp with EPS at $0.3, much lower than $0.32 exp. However, the company expects that it may participate in AI data centres trend infrastructure, fuelling future AI capabilities in the US.