Daily Summary: Wall Street Gains Fueled by Company Earnings and Strong Macro Data

Wall Street is gaining following positive sentiment from company earnings, higher GDP forecasts from the IMF, and a strong Conference Board reading. The SP500 (US500) futures is gaining 0.30% to 4600 points, and Nasdaq100 (US100) futures is up 0.80% to 15690 points. 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a new set of growth forecasts for 2023 and 2024. The release saw a number of upward revisions for the world's largest economies, especially for 2023. Although the Chinese economy is still expected to grow by 5.2%, as was signaled in the April forecast, other major economies are expected to see a slightly higher pace of growth this year than the IMF expected three months ago.

Tuesday's trading session in Europe brought considerable fluctuations. Overall, equity markets are slightly up as investors await Microsoft (MSFT.US) and Alphabet (GOOGL.US) results after the Wall Street session. 

Local establishments in China have once again announced the introduction of stimulus measures on the real estate market. 

LVMH witnessed a decline in US sales in Q2, the only region to exhibit a drop, due to a sluggish economy affecting purchases of its luxury items, despite a robust rebound in China. Although its fashion and leather goods unit saw a 21% jump in organic sales, weak US cognac demand and underperformance in smaller cities dampened overall growth.

In Germany, the Ifo sentiment index for July was 87.3, Forecast: 88, Previously: 88.5, which is slightly lower than forecasted and then previous reading.

The Conference Board data were released today. The report for July was expected to show an improvement compared to June's data. Indeed, this was the case with the headline Consumer Confidence index moving from 109.7 to 117.0! This is a major beat as the market expected the headline index to jump to 112.0. 

The ECB published a study on loans in the euro area. The ECB points out that banks are reporting a record drop in the demand for loans from companies. At the same time, banks are further tightening their restrictive lending policies.

Crude oil bounced following news of increased economic stimulus in China. Today Oil.WTI and Oil are increasing by 1.0%. 

Natural gas is up 0.8% today and its production remains well above 100 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) despite a sharp decline in the number of drilling rigs in the US. 

Temperatures in the US remain high, but this has not increased demand for natural gas enough to lead to a significant decrease in comparative inventories. 

Gold price reached a 2-month high near the $1,985 mark last week but started to pull back later on. It appears that this downward correction may have ended today with GOLD trading 0.5% higher on the day.

Cryptocurrencies continue to consolidate at the lows after recent dips. Today BTC is 0.3% higher around $29,200 and ETH is 0.5% higher around $1,860.

Bitcoin price remains in the range of $29,000 - $29,300 after yesterday's dynamic declines. At the same time, the latest analysis of Glassnode's on-chain data indicates that the largest addresses (above 1,000 BTC) are likely to sell (distribute) BTC.