Welcome to the last week of January 2025. Although Asian markets will be subdued due to the Chinese Lunar New Year beginning tomorrow, the Year of the Wood Snake, the American markets will keep us busy. We hear from Federal Reserve - rates are on hold, but Jerome Powell will hold a press conference and in the background we have President Trump demanding that the Fed is to cut rates immediately. In his Davos speech he said that he know rates much better “than the one who’s primarily in charge of making that decision” — the tension is there for us all to see. Any Fed comments on Wednesday could be undermined on Thursday by the US GDP data!
Away from the economic data we have Magnificent 7 members Tesla, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Apple scheduled to report earnings, along side household names such as Caterpillar, Comcast, Visa and ExxonMobil. Overnight the White House said Trump will hold off on imposing threatened tariffs and sanctions on Colombia following a bilateral agreement on the return of deported migrants.
Marketwise, Bitcoin fell 3.1% to $101,333.9, Ether fell 3.5% to $3,181.3, the yield on 10-year Treasuries declined three basis points to 4.59%, West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.7% to $74.16 a barrel and Spot gold fell 0.3% to $2,761.53 an ounce. The biggest currency mover was the NOK, weakening against the $ in line with the Oil price. As for data, today we have the German IFO in the morning and New Home Sales at 3 pm.
