The market's focus today remains on the impact of the coronavirus infection on the ability of the global economy to grow actively. In addition, the focus remains on the slowdown in economic growth in economically developed countries, led by America, and the publication of fresh data on employment in the United States this week.
The American economy faced a serious problem, which was neither shaky nor loose, although partially, but was solved by the summer of this year. The recovery has been quite active, but the new attacks of COVID-19, or rather its Indian strain, are slowing down this process, contributing to a slowdown in the growth of the local labor market.
It can be recalled that the administration of J. Biden adopted a program to stimulate the national economy and financial assistance to Americans at the beginning of this year, which ultimately led to the fact that a huge number of low-skilled workers prefer to receive benefits to go to work. We have already pointed out this problem, which will now be extremely difficult for the authorities to solve by taking unpopular measures, which will certainly cause new social unrest. An attempt to stimulate the growth of the labor market in the wake of aid measures with "helicopter" drop will not solve the problem, so we expect a reassessment of the current situation in the States closer to the fall and the beginning of a gradual process of eliminating aid measures. In the meantime, we can hardly expect a noticeable increase in the number of new jobs, which in turn will put pressure on economic growth and, as a result, restrain demand primarily for shares of companies that are fully dependent on this process.
In the foreign exchange market, the weakness of the labor market, on the one hand, will put pressure on the US dollar. But on the other hand, it will also support it. This strange situation can be explained by the influence of multidirectional factors that have been actively influencing financial markets since 2020. The pressure on the dollar is exerted by the ultra-soft course of the Fed's monetary policy and the presence of large-scale stimulus measures. Powell's tough statements about the regulator's desire to follow this course for an indefinite period of time are the main reason. At the same time, the dollar is not falling down because of its status as the world's reserve currency. It is in demand against the backdrop of slowing global economic growth, pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of other real financial instruments as a safe haven. Even gold feels uncomfortable in the current situation due to the continuing risk of a change in the monetary rate by the Federal Reserve this fall.
In general, we continue to expect the current trends to continue until September.
Forecast of the day:
The USD/JPY pair continues to decline against the background of slowing global economic growth and growing demand for protective assets. We believe that after a decline below the level of 109.20, the pair will continue to fall to 108.60.
The XAU/USD pair remains in a wide range of 1793.00-1833.00. But if the market sentiment continues to deteriorate, the gold price will try to test the 1833.00 mark again.
