Equity Markets

US equity markets started the week with a modest loss as three of the four major indexes declined.

• Dow Jones down 54 (0.20%)
• NASDAQ down 51 (0.38%)
• S&P 500 down 10.5 (0.25%)
• Russell 2000 up 2.5 (0.11%)

Tech stocks continued their weakness, with Apple (AAPL) and Netflix (NFLX) each down 0.9%. Microsoft (MSFT) dropped 1.2%, while Tesla dropped more than 2% as Michael Burry of the Big Short fame revealed a significant short position on the electric carmaker.

Growth and Tech stocks have remained under pressure as investors mull over whether a rise in inflation will be a trend going forward or transitory as the Fed expects.

Economic Announcements – FX

The RBA will release their May Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes this morning. This will give Aussie investors some clarification on the decision making process at the last meeting. With RBA members seemingly in lockstep with each other, there shouldn’t be any surprises that will move the AUD significantly.

Tonight, the Bank of England’s governor Bailey will be joined by deputies Broadbent and Ramsden to testify on the bank’s quantitative easing policies before the Lords Economic Affairs Committee, in London. With the BoE recently announcing plans to prepare for tapering their asset purchases, this testimony will be closely watched by traders to get any clues as to the banks timing on this, GBP volatility is a strong possibility.

Cryptos

Bitcoin and most other cryptos continued their decline on Monday as Elon Musk continued to feud with the crypto-verse on Twitter over the weekend.

With a large part of Bitcoin’s recent strong rally being based on the belief of corporate acceptance, Tesla’s repudiation of the crypto has seen BTCUSD drop around 15% in the last week.

 

Wednesday, 19 May 2021 – Indicative Index Dividends
^{Dividends are in Points}

Symbol	Dividend
ASX200	0
WS30	6.76
US500	0.578
US2000	0.059
NDX100	3.485
CAC40	0
STOXX50	0
ESP35	0
ITA40	0
FTSE100	0
DAX30	0
HK50	0
JP225	0
INDIA50	0