MILANO – Ore 16. Jerome Powell continues to guide the Fed towards decisive action against inflation and therefore the bets are consolidated for a new three-quarter point hike in interest rates at the next meeting in July. The president of the central bank told Congress that “the US economy is very strong and well positioned to support a more restrictive monetary policy”, and recalled that inflation itself “has obviously surprised to the upside in the last year and others. surprises could be in store. We will therefore have to be agile in responding to incoming data and evolving prospects “. In this context, therefore, the Fed is determined to bring inflation back to 2%, assures Powell, stressing that the central bank has “the necessary tools and the determination to do so”.
News could come from the White House, with the president Joe Biden which could announce today the temporary (three-month) suspension of the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon. The news, which comes from Reutersis in line with what Biden said on Monday: that he was considering calling for a suspension of the tax, an operation that would encounter considerable opposition in Congress, even from many Democrats.
The equity markets of the Old Continent are falling sharply after the launch of Wall Street and the speech of the president of Powell: the Milan stock exchange is dropping 1.8% like Frankfurt, with Amsterdam, Paris and Madrid all losing 1.6%. London was down by 1.6%, above the Moscow parity. The spread between BTP and Bund Germans dropped to 187 points, with the yield on the Treasury product by a few fractions below 3.5%. Oil with the WTI remains very weak, falling by 6% below 103 dollars a barrel, while gas rises by 2% to 128 euros per megawatt hour. In Piazza Affari again Saipem down sharply after the launch of the capital increase: it also passes through a phase of suspension. Wall Street weak: the Dow Jones loses 0.7%, the Nasdaq 0.1%.
The indications that came from the Asian markets were of strong skepticism regarding the riskiest assets. On the other hand, as a note Bloomberg, from Morgan Stanley to Goldman Sachs, analysts and economists’ forecasts are wasted, taking into account lean times for stocks and economic prospects. The Asian stock markets, in a volatile day, gradually lost momentum: lo JPY it hit a new 24-year low against the dollar. The Nikkei a Tokyo it closed 0.37% lower at 26,149.55, after gaining 0.82% and hitting nearly a week highs of 26,462.83. The broader Topix index also finished down 0.19% to 1,852.65. TO Shanghai the composite index fell by 1.2% to 3,267.20 points while that of Shenzhen it lost 1.28% to 2,119.82. Hong Kong recorded a decline of 2.56% to 21.008 points e Only it left 2.74% on the ground at 2,342.81 points.
The BTP Italy starts again today for the third placement day, the last one dedicated to the retail sector before the window opens for institutional investors. On the second day of placement, Tuesday, the demand faded while remaining at good levels: the 17th issue yesterday collected orders for € 2.444 billion in over 74 thousand contracts. Overall, therefore, in the first two days of placement, BTP Italia totaled orders for € 5.85 billion, less than the more than 8.7 billion (of which 4.7 billion on the second day) of the previous May 2020 edition. The phase dedicated to institutions will take place only on Thursday 23 June. The Italian BTP has a duration of 8 years and has a maturity of 28/06/2030 and is a bond indexed to the Italian inflation rate, with coupons paid every 6 months together with the revaluation of the capital due to the inflation of the same semester. The minimum real rate fixed before the issue is 1.6% and can only be adjusted upwards.
Il Petroleum it fell sharply in New York, where prices lost 5.06% to 103.98 dollars a barrel following fears of a recession. The consumer confidence thud in Europe. In June, compared to May, the European Commission index recorded a drop of 2.4 points in the Eurozone and 1.9 points in the EU as a whole. This is the flash estimate of the ECFIN general directorate of the community executive. The confidence index stands at -23.6 points in the euro area and -24 points in the Twenty-Seven, further falling below the long-term average of -11.0 points in the euro zone and -10, 6 in the EU, “closer – notes Brussels – to the all-time low recorded in April 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
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