Morning Brew February 29 2024

Good Morning,

Welcome to a key data day: for traders in CHF we expect the Swiss KOF indicator, the Official Reserves of the SNB, German unemployment, the CPI, the Canadian GDP and as most important t the US Initial Jobless Claims as well as the PCE Price Index as key measure of inflation for the FED:

By far, any surprise in the PCE Price index will have the largest market impact across all asset classes as a key driver of the Feds policy.

The expectation is 2.4% annually and 2.8% adjusted, monthly is 0.3% and 0.4%, this is to a large extent the basis for the current expectation of a little more than 3 rate cuts priced in this year, the second part is the labor market, where we will receive more information at next weeks nonfarm payroll.

Equities remained subdued yesterday having problem to maintain the momentum from the Nvidia earning push, last week, the US 500 is trading at 5070, the US 30 38913 and the USTech100 NAS 17865. Germany and Japan remain strong at 17600 and 39243.

Salesforce and Snowflake as the key tech earnings this week both gave a lower than expected guidance, Snowflake`s  shares fell 20% in extended trading, Salesforce dropped 2%.

Rates are little changed ahead of the PCE data and the USD Index is lower at 103.87, pushed lower by a strong JPY: the Japanese Currency could gain to 149.80 against the USD after hawkish comments by BOJ`s Takata. , EURUSDF remains at 1.0836 and GBPUSD 1.2665.

Gold and Silver are at 2036 and 22.50.

Bitcoin broke the 60k, and traded in huge swings after a technical issue at coinbase just after the price hit 63k, causing a 10% drop before recovering. Some coinbase clients saw a balance of zero when logging in. Ethereum is up 50% in the last month to trade at 3480.

Expect sharp moves at 14:30 and into the US Open after the PCE data and trade safely.

Thursday

- Data CH FX  Reserves, DE Unemployment Rate & CPI , US PCE, Initial Jobless claims 
- Earnings: Alimentation, Anheuser-Busch, CRH, NetEase, Dell Technologies, Autodesk, London Stock Exchange Group

Friday
- Data EU HICP  International PMI, NO Nonfarm Payroll

Expiries

Physically Settled Futures

SBH4 will expire 29 Feb 2024 at 16:00 GMT

HOH4 will expire 29 Feb 2024 at 16:00 GMT

EBMH4 will expire 04 Mar 2024 at 15:00 GMT