In the latest revelation of just how far China, and its central bank, are willing to go to prop up its ailing local stock market, on Thursday the official Shanghai Securities News reported that China's foreign exchange regulator has bought mainland stocks worth over 27 billion yuan ($4.18 billion) via three low-profile investment firms it controls.
Just one week ago, when the US dollar was surging when one after another Fed president were making hawkish statements (who can forget Bullard's forecast that a rate hike may occur as soon as April), one of the speeches which surprised the market the most, was that by Chicago Fed's permadove Chuck Evans, who on March 22 said that the Federal Reserve is on track for "gentle, gradual" rate hikes unless economic data comes in a lot stronger than expected or inflation picks up faster than anticipated, a top Fed official said on Tuesday.
Following its demise into contraction in February, Chicago PMI jumped back to 53.6 (expansion) in March which is better than expected but remains below January's 55.5 highs. The last 12 months have seen quite unprecedented noise in this economic barometer and MNI reports respondents saying the recovery is "slow and steady... fuelled by warmer weather."
With both ISM Manufacturing and Services employment indices collapsing, endless headlines of layoffs, Challenger-Grey noting Q1 as the worst since 2009, and NFIB small business hiring weak, it is no surprise that initial jobless claims is finally waking up. For the 3rd week in a row - the longest streak since July 2015. The last 3 weeks have seen a 9.1% surge in jobless claims - the biggest such rise since April 2014.
And finally, as Challenger-Grey notes,
The last time Europe had at least two consecutive months of deflation was in late 2014/early 2015 when the ECB launched its sovereign QE, and when prices staged a modest rebound into the rest of the year. One year later, it's more of the same, and as Eurostat revealed earlier today, after a headline price drop of -0.2% in February, March prices declined once more, this time by -0.1% in line with expectations, driven by a -8.7% plunge in energy prices.