Financial Markets Daily Report15 February 2022
Financial markets started the week with a risk-off session, fueled by the escalation in tensions involving Ukraine. The rising geopolitical risk is adding to investors’ concerns about the persistence of inflationary pressures and the prospect of a more aggressive withdrawal of monetary policy stimuli by major central banks.
- Financial markets started the week with a risk-off session, fueled by the escalation in tensions involving Ukraine. The rising geopolitical risk is adding to investors’ concerns about the persistence of inflationary pressures and the prospect of a more aggressive withdrawal of monetary policy stimuli by major central banks.
- ECB President Christine Lagarde noted on Monday that any change will be gradual and based in incoming data. By contrast, the President of the St. Louis Fed, James Bullard, reiterated calls for a faster pace of interest rate hikes.
- In this context, commodity prices continued to rise, with the Brent price nearing the $100 mark. In addition, stock prices declined, sovereign bond yields edged up in the US and across the eurozone periphery (in Spain also affected by a change in the reference bond by Bloomberg) while safe-haven currencies outperformed.
- On the data front today: the ZEW survey for February in Germany and the PPI inflation for January in the US.