Markets Overview
- ASX SPI 200 futures down 0.4% to 7,067.00
- Dow Average down 0.8% to 34,474.83
- Aussie down 0.3% to 0.6403 per US$
- U.S. 10-year yield rose 2.6bps to 4.2741%
- Australia 3-year bond yield rose 5.9 bps to 3.97%
- Australia 10-year bond yield rose 11 bps to 4.32%
- Gold spot down 0.1% to $1,889.18
- Brent futures up 0.4% to $83.80/bbl
Economic Events
Shares in Asia are poised to drop as investor concern that monetary policy makers may not be done raising interest rates fueled a further selloff in US stocks and bonds.
Equity futures for benchmarks in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong all declined. Contracts on US indexes fell in early Asia trading after stocks in New York extended this week’s losses on Thursday, with the Nasdaq 100 notching its worst three-day slide since February. The 10-year Treasury yield rose as high as 4.33%, within a few basis points of its 2022 highs.
This week’s shift down follows the publication Wednesday of minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting that suggested officials are considering tighter policy, slamming hopes that the central bank was done raising rates. Global government bond yields reached 15-year highs on the back of resilient economic data.
Other News
Russia has created an inflatable church adorned with Orthodox icons and camouflage for priests visiting troops on the Ukrainian front lines.
Clerics with massive crosses hanging from their necks were an unusual sight at Russia’s annual weapons expo outside of Moscow on Monday, where Russian defence companies present their newest prototypes.
Father Boris Grishin showed visitors around the mobile church, which consists of a caravan equipped with two cots, a shower and a toilet, with an inflatable 13ft by 13ft tent serving as a prayer room.
The mobile church is ideal for priests travelling to the war zone or military training in the field, Father Grishin said.
“You fold it out, inflate really quickly, do the service, fold it up and go,” he told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.
“With two people pitching it and hanging the icons, you can do it in under 10 minutes.”
The prayer room is big enough for a platoon of soldiers, he said.
Russian army platoons typically number between 21 and 28 troops.
Two Orthodox icons hang either side of the entrance.
On the side of the camouflage-patterned tent there is a large, Byzantine-style image of Jesus combined with pictures of Russian soldiers and the letters “Z” and “V”, symbols of the Russian invasion.
Inside the tent, cardboard icons were seen on the walls.
It is not the first time the Russian Orthodox Church has developed a mobile church to help its work with the army.
In the 2010s, it promoted special churches for airborne troops that can be parachuted and easily pitched in the field.
The Russian Church has developed increasingly close ties with the Kremlin in recent years.
It has been a staunch supporter of the invasion and has even reprimanded and fired dissident priests who refuse to pray for “the victory of Russia” in their services, as the Church now prescribes.
Separately, Orthodox priests reportedly visited the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Tuesday to meet the Russian soldiers deployed there and to give “their blessing” to the site.
