Thursday, December 9 brings along several interesting economic reports.
First off, China published its inflation data for November. YoY the inflation rate was a little disappointing at 2.3%, but MoM it exceeded the forecasts at 0.4%. The PPI in yearly terms was also better than expected at 12.9%.
China also delivered a report on yuan loans for the last month, which failed to meet investors’ expectations.
Another bit of news from China is that Evergrande Group finally entered an official default, after missing several payments. The company is currently undergoing a financial inspection and a planned restructuring of its debt.
In other news, as is typical of any business Thursday, today the United States published its weekly jobless claims reports.
The results show that initial jobless claims were lower than expected this week and the four-week average is going down. However, continuing claims were almost a million higher than anticipated.
Today US stock indices will open lower due to some profit-taking after yesterday’s rally. A company to keep an eye on today is Amazon. The retail giant just got slapped with a huge fine of $1.3 billion by Italy and its stock is going down as a result.
In Covid-related news, it appears that the United Kingdom’s government has finally caved in on the issue of lockdowns. Boris Johnson was quite vocal about celebrating ‘Freedom Day’ when the UK reopened fully in July this year, and had previously promised there would be no more lockdowns.
However, the recent consistent spikes in coronavirus infections have caused restrictions to be reintroduced one by one. Last week the UK brought back mask mandates for indoor spaces such as stores, banks, cinemas, etc. Today the PM issued a request that employees work from home, as much as their jobs allow it.
So it seems that even if the government is not formally calling this a lockdown, things are slowly returning to how they were before ‘Freedom Day.’ The British pound has weakened as a result.
