Markets Overview
- ASX SPI 200 futures down 0.9% to 7,086.00
- Dow Average little changed at 32,958.35
- Aussie down 1.3% to 0.7198 per US$
- U.S. 10-year yield rose 14.8bps to 2.1419%
- Australia 3-year bond yield rose 3bps to 1.84%
- Australia 10-year bond yield rose 6bps to 2.45%
- Gold spot down 1.7% to $1,954.26
- Brent futures down 6.0% to $105.95/bbl
Economic Events
- 9:30am: (AU) March ANZ Roy Morgan Weekly Consumer, prior 100.1
- 11:30am: (AU) 4Q House Price Index YoY, est. 21.9%, prior 21.7%
- 11:30am: (AU) 4Q House Price Index QoQ, est. 3.5%, prior 5.0%
- 11:30am: (AU) RBA-Minutes
Volatility continued to dominate global markets as investors assessed geopolitical developments, with U.S. stocks failing to hold onto gains that reached 1% earlier in the day. Oil briefly tumbled below $100 a barrel after a recent surge that spurred inflation fears. Treasury 10-year yields hit the highest level since 2019.
The Fed will begin this week a multi-month campaign to conquer inflation that could see Chair Jerome Powell moving even more aggressively after Russia’s war on Ukraine fanned prices further. Already pivoting to tightening monetary policy amid the fastest inflation in four decades, Powell and colleagues now have to deal with the economic fallout of the war, which threatens to deliver the twin blows of weaker growth and even-quicker inflation.
Other News
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to “single combat” amid the war in Ukraine — prompting a Kremlin official to fire back at the Tesla boss, calling him a “weakling” and “little devil.”
“I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat,” Musk tweeted early Monday, a term that refers to a person-to-person fight on a battlefield. “Stakes are Ukraine.” The words “Vladimir Putin” and “Ukraine” were written in Cyrillic letters used in both Russian and Ukrainian.
In another tweet, he tagged Putin’s official Twitter account and wrote: “Do you agree to this fight?”
Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, tweeted in response to Musk, writing: “You, little devil, are still young.”
Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, came to Musk’s defense, tweeting: “I am sure that @elonmusk can send Putin to Jupiter.”
After Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine nearly three weeks ago, Musk agreed to the Ukrainian government’s request to provide Starlink internet terminals in case the country was cut off from landline connections.
