Morning Brew April 18 2023

Good Morning,

Equities traded moderately friendly yesterday while the USD gained strength on higher rates and profit taking. The Dow rose 0.3%, S&P 0.33% and Nasdaq 0.28%. the GER40 seesawed a bit and is now where we were yesterday morning at 15820. The USD Index gained to 102 and EURUSD fell to 1.0940, GBPUSD 1.25 and USD rose to 134,35. Bitcoin dropped below 30000 and Gold and Silver are at 2000 and 25.08.

China`s economy grew faster than expected at 4.5% vs 4% expected and the UK employment figures came stronger than expected.

Google dropped 2.7% on after a report that Samsung Electronics considering replacing Google with Microsoft Bing as the default search engine on its devices.

UBS is adapting it`s buyback program due to the takeover of credit Suisse. UBS had planned to buy back shares for USD 6 bio and cancel them – parts of those will now be used for the takeover.

From a trading point of view it is quite tricky to read the market at the moment. We are looking at earnings, economic data, geopolitics and sentiment trying to gauge direction. Today we are expecting earnings by BoA and Goldman Sachs as the key releases, good numbers could be read as a further requirement for rate hikes by the fed. It seems equities are taking good news as good and bad news as bad, FX is seeing good news as hawkish. 

The German ZEW, US Housing Starts  and the Canadian CPI will be the most important economic events alongside earnings today that  have the potential to move markets,

The European Parliament holds its final vote to approve climate change policies.

This week’s key earnings releases:

Tuesday 18 April
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Netflix, Johnson & Johnson, United Airlines, Lockheed Martin, Intuitive Surigical, Ericsson

Wednesday 19 April
Tesla, Morgan Stanley, US Bancorp, Zions,Citizens Financial, IBM, Alcoa, Abbott Lab, Lam Research, Las Vegas Sands, Metro, ASML, Heineken

Thursday 20 April
Blackstone, American Express, Comerica, Fifth Third, Huntington, KeyCorp, Sunovus, AT&T, Union Pacific, CSX, Philip Morris, DR Horton, CATL, Tryg, Nokia, Sartorius

Friday 21 April
Procter & Gamble, Regions Financial, Schlumberger, Freeport-McMoRan, Jinko Solar, SAP, Sandvik, Investor

This week’s economic key events

Tuesday 18 April

• US Housing starts & building permits (Mar)
• US Manheim used vehicle prices (Apr)
• Germany ZEW survey (Apr)
• UK Earnings & employment (Feb)
• UK Payrolls (Mar)
• Canada CPI
• China Retail sales (Mar)
• China Industrial production (Mar)
• China Fixed Asset Investment (Jan-Mar)
• China GDP (Q1)
• Japan Industrial production (Feb, final)

Wednesday 19 April

• US Beige Book
• Eurozone CPI (Mar, final)
• UK CPI (Mar)
• UK PPI (Mar)
• ECB’s Schnabel speaks

Thursday 20 April

• US Philly Fed survey (Apr)
• US Existing home sales (Mar)
• US Initial jobless claims (Apr 15)
• Germany PPI (Mar)
• France Business confidence (Apr)
• Eurozone Consumer confidence (Apr)
• Japan Trade balance (Mar)
• Fed’s Waller and Bowman speak
• ECB’s Visco speaks

Friday 21 April

• US S&P manufacturing PMI (Apr, preliminary)
• US S&P services PMI (Apr, preliminary)
• Eurozone PMI composite (Apr)
• UK Retail sales (Mar)
• UK PMI services (Apr)
• UK PMI composite (Apr)
• Fed’s Cook speaks
• Japan National CPI (Mar)
• Japan Manufacturing PMI (Apr)
• South Korea Exports – 20days (Apr)
• Hong Kong CPI (Mar)