On the first day of the new week, the total number of coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic reached 142 million, with over 3 million deaths. Daily infection rates globally have returned to the all-time peak experienced in early January this year when the new, more highly contagious variants of Covid-19 started making their way through the world.
The trend of infections remains extremely worrying in India, which continues to outdo its own record for most infections in one day. Yesterday there were 275,000 new Covid-19 cases confirmed in India. The only country with higher daily records is the United States, but it seems like India will be able to rival those numbers soon unless this is the peak of the outbreak there.
Turkey and Brazil are the other two most heavily affected countries at the moment in terms of the number of people who contract the coronavirus each day. Things are quieting down in countries with better vaccination campaigns, including within the European Union.
Still, despite the bad news about the pandemic, and perhaps precisely because the world’s most developed economies seem to be doing better, today risk appetite is the dominant market sentiment.
Safe havens like the US dollar and the Japanese yen are losing positions against other major currencies. Even emerging market currencies are doing well versus the USD, with the exception of the Indian rupee, which is under heavy pressure due to the factors outlined above.
Although risk appetite has been evident in the currency market, stock indices today are going to trade in a subdued manner. Many earnings reports are expected (such as Coca-Cola and IBM), so US stock indices prefer to wait for this data before committing to another rally.
Tesla stock today will likely take a beating after two people died in a car crash caused by an error in the vehicle’s self-driving mode. Tesla still recommends that the driver remain in the driver’s seat in case of such problems as its software has not been cleared for full autonomy yet, which was not the case in this particular traffic accident. Still, this event is a reminder about the challenges that still remain the world of self-driving cars.
Cryptocurrencies today are observing a recovery after their prices dropped massively over the weekend. It is still unclear what exactly caused the drop, though several factors are suspected to have played a role. The most significant among these is that a region in China known for cryptocurrency mining was left without power for a while.
