Investors are keenly looking forward to the United States unemployment rate for August, which is going to be published today, as well as a retail sales report. This data comes on the back of better-than-expected jobless claims data yesterday, which showed more Americans found employment and fewer lost their jobs in the previous week. However, the non-manufacturing reports from the US were not particularly uplifting, indicating that the world’s largest economy is indeed struggling.
Nonetheless, investors will be cautious in their reaction to the unemployment rate, because at the moment there are quite a bit of seasonal jobs being created in order to carry out the 2020 census of the United States population.
The US’ northern neighbor, Canada, will also be publishing its unemployment information today. In addition, investors are speculating that the Bank of Canada will announce a switch to average inflation targeting at its meeting next week, copying a move by the Federal Reserve.
In terms of the stock markets, today we are seeing a mild recovery after yesterday’s massive sell-off, especially of tech stocks. Tesla and Apple are among the companies whose shares are dropping at the fastest rate presently.
Finally, we conclude the week with an update on the coronavirus situation. The number of total cases worldwide has surpassed 26.5 million. The United States experienced its biggest daily increase this week yesterday, declaring 44,000 new Covid-19 cases. The daily tally has been increasing since Sunday, though it still remains far from the July records.
Brazil has surpassed 4 million infections; India is very close behind with 3.9 million. The latter could overtake Brazil very soon, though, because the rate at which the virus is spreading is much higher than in Brazil right now.
South America remains highly affected by the coronavirus at the moment. In Europe, France and Spain are continuing their worrisome trend of declaring thousands of new cases every day. New cases are also observed in Asia too, though at a lower rate (with the exception of India).
