Japan's failure, virus mutations and a pause in tensions

Aug 18, 2020

From the point of view of macroeconomic statistics, the main event of yesterday was the disastrous data on Japan's GDP. -27.8% decline in GDP (compared to the same period a year earlier) is even worse than in Britain. Naturally, the fall became the record in the entire history of observations. In general, this is further evidence in favor of the depth of the abyss into which the world economy has sunk because if the pandemic.

However, all this cannot prevent the stock markets from further growing, increasing the gap between their prices and reality.
We have already written that the global economy will take not months, but quarters and even years to recover. And this is for the case when the pandemic can be brought under control. But even this is questionable (the number of new cases is growing in France, Australia reports record number of new deaths, and in New Zealand elections were postponed for 4 weeks due to an outbreak), the situation exacerbated by news of the mutation of the COVID virus. In particular, scientists in Malaysia have discovered a new, more contagious strain of the virus.

The only conditional positive is the postponement of the meeting between the United States and China on the review of the Phase 1 trade agreement. The meeting would surely end with a new round of tensions, so that the absence of a worsening of the situation is already positive.

Gold returned to $2000, demonstrating that last week's "Black Tuesday" was a misunderstanding.

Meanwhile, the oil market is preparing for tomorrow's meeting of the OPEC + monitoring committee, which is to assess the progress of the deal to limit oil production. Information about overfulfillment of the plan may well push the asset's quotes up, but news that some Irans or Nigerias are again violating can provoke oil sales.