Summing up 2020: Major events of the past year

Congratulations, we’ve made it through 2020! This eventful year is almost over. Let’s take a moment to look back and recall its key events.

It’s difficult to even start to comprehend how much this expiring year has changed our lives. We are all wearing masks and washing our hands several times a day now. If someone told us back in 2019, that we wouldn’t be able to travel or even leave our house, we would laugh in their face. But we did face the lockdown and spent several months self-distancing, in isolation.

But apart from the much-hyped coronavirus, what other key events are worth considering? We believe that there were more…

What is the relationship between plague and assets?

The new corona-virus that originated in China and swept the world has attracted the attention of most people, it had influence on the trend of many financial assets at the same time. Then what is the relationship between different financial assets and the plague?

  1. Stock indices and individual stocks. As far as the stock index is concern, the essence of stock indices is “multiple stocks in each industry / local currency”. We have noticed that many funds call for “the world belongs to the optimists” and “buy stocks”, but they are not really optimists. During epidemics or wars, the purchasing power more…

Key mark for Euro passed

Europe

EURUSD

The important support for EURUSD at 1.05 was broken this week. This happened due to more optimistic than expected forecasts for economy and further course of interest rate’s hike. In September, markets and the Fed Reserve had something we may call consensus for expectations of two hikes in 2017, but in December more hawks appeared, and eventually they await for three hikes. This goes along with Trump’s promises to boost economy growth by means of taxes and public expenses. Since the real divergence between monetary policies of ECB and the Federal Reserve became a driver of EURUSD drop below 1.05, the more…

Dollar won back its part, Euro’s turn now

EURUSD

Dollar was defending itself last week. Growth impulse after Trump’s rally was losing its power. The potential for dollar growth on the higher chances for the rate raising by the Fed Reserve won back (they are sure 100% about December rate increase) even with the gap, since they include 50% chances for two more raising in 2017. Meanwhile, stock markets continued to grow on the expectations of public spending increase, and did not consider the policy tightening as a threat for upwards movement. On Thursday and Friday the market gave a formal reason for dollar selling, which used dollar bears quite more…

Pound repeated abysmal record of Brexit

GBP

EURUSD

The pair was testing the downtrend resistance, which occurred in August, but finally could not break it. During first trading week of the new month and quarter, the American currency was feeling pretty good as a whole. It is quite possible that the markets will show higher interest to the dollar again as soon as yield curve changes its shape. Market participants are becoming more confident in rate’s increase in December by Fed Reserve, thus, the attractiveness of the American assets is growing in comparison with Euro assets, where both rate rising question and QE ending remain open. Markets confidence was more…