Summary for the 8th of April 2019


The US labor market is back on track, but the wage growth disappoints. The government shutdown has led to an unusual strong employment in January, and unusual weak in February. The data for March shows a more normalization of the employment. Nonfarm payrolls has increased by 196 000, over market’s expectation of 177 000. This summer, the current US economic expansion will be going in for the longest period of expansion in history, in the light of that, the growth in employment is considered strong. Though the US average hourly earnings disappoints, and only increases by 0.1% from February to March, making the annual wage growth to fall by 0.2% to 3.2%.  Even though the US labor market is still strong, the wage growth doesn’t seem to growth as strongly.

At the last ECB interest rate decision meeting, the ECB had downward adjusted the economic growth sharply, postponed the rate hike and introduced new longer term refinancing operations. The economic indicators released after the meeting had been disappointing. A new liquidity system to prevent the negative effects of negative interest rates were discussed, according to the ECB Accounts.

The IMF will be holding an annual spring meeting on Thursday. Prior to the meeting, the IMF will publish the economic outlook, it won’t come as a surprise if the IMF downwards adjusted the economic outlooks.

The US inflation data will be released on Wednesday, as well as the FOMC Minutes.

Indices for 8th of April. Better than expected US labor data and the expectations of US-China trade talk have led to positive close in the US stock markets on Friday.

Dow: +0.2% (5th of April)
S&P 500: +0.5% (5th of April)
Nasdaq: +0.6% (5th of April)
Nikkei: -0.2% (8th of April)
Chinese indices: -0.8% (8th of April)
STOXX Europe 600 Index: -0.19% (8th of April)

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