The U.S. dollar traded overall weaker against other major currencies on the day of the FOMC decision, but also overall depreciated against most significant emerging market currencies with the USD/ZAR pair finally able to fall well below the 15.0-threshold.To get more news about global prime, you can visit wikifx.com official website.
Cryptos were also performing upbeat with Bitcoin trading at times above $41k, while Ethereum gained over the course of Wednesday more than five per cent and was close to the $2.8k mark.
Precious metals stabilised in the late afternoon on Wednesday after gold and silver traded new two-week lows with the gold price at times falling below the $1,900-level in the spot market.
On Thursday the Bank of England (BoE) is due to make its regular monetary policy announcement. It is widely expected that another 25 bp rate hike would be announced. Though there is not a complete consensus how exactly the monetary tightening will look live over the coming months as not only inflation is a factor to consider but also the reducing level of growth as indicated by a BoE report last week according to Reuters.
From the U.S. multiple potentially important economic indicators can be expected on Thursday, including the Philadelphia Fed General Business Conditions survey, data on housing starts and permits in February as well as capacity utilisation and industrial production as well as weekly new jobless claims.
At the end of the day the EUR/USD pair was settling higher, though compared to the volatility over the past week the daily market move might have seemed even timid given it was the day the Federal Reserve announced the first rate hike by 25 bp since 2018.
A rate hike in March and the announcement of rate hikes over the course of the next six remaining FOMC meetings was to be expected, while it was also announced that the Fed would shrink its almost $9 trillion balance sheet over following months.
On Thursday morning consumer price index (CPI) data will be published for the eurozone. It is expected that the annualized rate of inflation in February will noticeably increase compared to the 5.1 % seen in the previous month.
European stock market indices also performed very strongly on Wednesday in line with global trends with the Europe 50 index up by around four per cent. Though after the trading break at night the index opened significantly lower, losing roughly half the gains from Wednesday.
By Thursday morning the German industrial company Thyssenkrupp was one of the worst-performing blue chips in the regions trading down by more than seven per cent. Thyssenkrupp announced that it could no longer stick to its previous free cash flow before MA forecast for 2021/22 due to the situation in Ukraine given the uncertainty if a spin-off of the steel division would still be possible.
Oil prices stabilised by Wednesday after dropping from the recent high for more than a week as WTI crude oil did not test the low from Tuesday anymore and traded steadily above $94 per barrel. Volatility also reduced with the price range on Wednesday between daily high and low only amounting to 5.4 %, while during the previous week oftentimes double-digit percentage moves were a common occurrence.
Besides the protracted situation in Ukraine and sanctions in place against Russia making some exports for Russian energy commodities to the global markets less feasible there have been other developments this week, in particular the worsening pandemic situation in China and the subsequent government restrictions, which affect the industry and in turn could affect the overall demand for energy.
Weekly crude oil stockpile numbers from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) were up by 4.3 million barrels compared to the previous week, which is an even bigger build compared to the 3.75 million barrels build announced by the American Petroleum Institute (API) on Tuesday.
Meanwhile the EIA predicted that oil prices would remain above $100 per barrel over the coming months given the geopolitical risk from the situation in Ukraine and current and even potential sanctions against Russia.
