Authored by Thorstein Polleit via The Mises Institute,
The European Central Bank (ECB) pushed its deposit rate to minus 0.4 percent in April 2016: Since then, euro area banks must pay 0.4 percent per annum on their excess reserves held at ECB accounts. This, in turn, has far-reaching consequences. To start with, banks seek to evade this "penalty rate," especially by buying government bonds.
S&P futures are little changed at 6am ET, trading at 2347.55 and paring an earlier 0.4 percent drop, on the back of the USDJPY ramp which for the second day in a row has emerged alongside the European open, just as the key 110 support level appears in danger, soothing concerns about the Fed's balance sheet reduction and "some" Fed officials warning that stocks have gotten expensive.
After the best quarter for US stocks since 2015, global equities have started off Q2 on the right foot, despite caution about the upcoming meeting between President Trump and China's Xi Jinping later this week, and Fed Minutes which are expected to be more hawkish than the FOMC statement.
Eric Townsend and Patrick Ceresna, the people behind the weekly Macro Voices podcast, have released an extended, hour-long interview with Julian Brigden founder of Macro Intelligence 2 Partners, in which among the various topics discussed (see the attached slidepack for supporting materials and charts) were:
It was a week when the world was supposed to come to an end, notes Bloomberg's Richard Breslow, but then it didn’t...
I can’t say I’m disappointed, but it sounds like a lot of people are. Curious. Equities, the dollar and bond yields were put to the test on the failure of Congress to pass new health care legislation. All three survived the challenge. The Republicans have vowed to try again.