Last week, the American stock indices saw slight changes – the NASDAQ and the S&P500 rose by 0.1%, while the DJI fell by 0.1%. Moreover, dollar once more depreciated against euro. It should be emphasized that the latest macroeconomic data readings from the US economy ought to have supported local assets. High values of the manufacturing ISM index (56 pts.) and the PMI (55 pts.) confirmed optimistic moods in that sector. In addition, the payrolls exceeded market expectations. Despite the growth in the unemployment rate to 4.8%, the non – farm payrolls stood at 227K vs 175K projected. Furthermore, there was a meeting of the FOMC last week. In line with market consensus, the council did not make any changes in the monetary policy.

Weekly comment MM Prime TFI  - January 30, 2016

Last week, the economic calendar was extremely interesting. First and foremost, investors focused on the public appearance of Theresa May who announced “hard” Brexit. After all, the plan of leaving the EU by the Great Britain was rather positively assessed by the market. Thus, pound significantly appreciated against other foreign currencies. The meeting of the ECB Governing Council was another very important event last week. The council did not make any changes in the monetary policy. Moreover, Mario Draghi emphasized that the bank did not consider limiting the scope of QE - it was very good information for the stock markets. There was also a conference with the participation of Janet Yellen.

Last week, most of the major global stock indices continued their growths, whereas the market sentiment was slightly cooled down by Donald Trump. He took part in a conference which was the first one since his electoral success. Nonetheless, the famous billionaire did not live up to the expectations of the market which was looking forward to the specific announcements on the fiscal policy and infrastructure spending. This was all the more disappointing because of the fact that the Donald Trump’s election program was very controversial - it may be a fly in the ointment as well, especially if the protectionist schemes will be realized. As a result, this time dollar appreciated against euro and the stock market tone dropped slightly. In addition, investors learnt the dynamic of the US retail sales.

At the beginning of the new year the market sentiment was bullish. As a result, most of the global major stock indices ended last week in positive territory. In the US, the NASDAQ rose by 2.6%, the S&P500 increased by 1.7% and the DJI soared by 1%. In Europe, British FTSE250 went up by 1.5%, while French CAC40 and German DAX grew by 1%. The first week of 2017 brought a lot of macroeconomic data releases. Most of the readings from the Euroland exceeded market’s expectations e.g. the services PMI (53.7 pts.), the dynamic of the retail sales (2.3% y/y) and most of the confidence indices. Moreover, the publications of the PMIs from China did not fail as well. Nevertheless, investors focused on the latest data from the American economy.