SHANGHAI, Jun 21 (SMM) – This is a roundup of global macroeconomic news last night and what is expected today.
Last night
The US dollar index climbed above 95 and closed at 95.12 on Wednesday. US treasury yields also rose slightly after Federal Reserve Board chairman Jerome Powell saidthat there was a "strong" case to continue raising interest rates.
“Earlier in the expansion, as the economy recovered, the need for highly accommodative monetary policy was clear," Powell said at the 2018 European Central Bank forum in Portugal on Wednesday. “But with unemployment low and expected to decline further, inflation close to our objective, and the risks to the outlook roughly balanced, the case for continued gradual increases in the federal funds rate is strong.”
LME nickel rose 1.6% overnight on worries over supply. LME tin edged up close to 1%, while other metals dipped. LME copper fell to a three-week low on Wednesday on inventory surge. LME aluminium tumbled to the weakest since April as global output increased.
The US current account deficit, which measures the flow of goods, services and investments into and out of the country, widened in the first quarter, driven by increases in goods imports.
In the first quarter of this year, the current account deficit increased to $124.1 billion from a revised $116.1 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.
US existing home sales unexpectedly fell in May as an acute shortage of properties on the market pushed house prices to a record high.
Sale of existing homes, which make up about 90% of US home sales, slipped 0.4% from April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.43 million units in May. This marked the second straight month of decline in sales.
Housing inventory shrank 6.1% from a year ago. Supply has declined for 36 months in a row on a year-on-year basis. At the rate of sales in May, it would take 4.1 months to deplete current inventories, up from four months in April.
US crude oil inventory shrank 5.91 million barrels over the week ended June 15, the largest weekly decline since January, after decreasing 4.14 million barrels in the previous week, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Meanwhile, refined oil inventory and gasoline inventory increased 2.72 million barrels and 3.28 million barrels, respectively.
Day ahead
Key factors to watch today include the US initial jobless claims over the week ended June 16, the April housing price data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) as well as the preliminary reading of eurozone consumer confidence for June.
