On the last day of the week the economic calendar is rather sparse as many countries celebrate Good Friday and the markets there are closed for the day.
The only notable releases today are coming out of the United States. The March non-farming payrolls exceeded expectations by climbing to 916K, but the unemployment rate stayed at 6% just as the forecast predicted. Average hourly earnings, however, were somewhat disappointing, dropping to -0.1% in March.
Meanwhile, the oil market is struggling to adjust to the latest output decision by OPEC+. At this week’s meeting of the cartel and its allies, it was decided that despite ongoing pressure to demand, more oil will be supplied to the market in the coming months.
Instead of the 500,000 increase that Russia was asking for, however, the agreed quotas are 350,000 in May and June, and 400,000 in July. Thanks to the smaller increase, it seems that oil prices were able to stabilize after their initial slump at the announcement.
In general, experts estimate that the demand for oil will remain lower while the pandemic continues, and thus no quota increases would have been better for oil prices. Still, the Brent crude is trading around $64.67 today, while the WTI has reached $61.30 per barrel.
As for the stock markets, today we are seeing a rally in US indices, largely thanks to President Joe Biden’s infrastructure spending bill, also known as the American Jobs Plan. The S&P 500 index surpassed a historic high of over 4,000. If Biden’s plan gets approved by Congress (which seems doubtful as of the moment), it could boost the GDP of the United States by up to 1% by next year.
In other news, the coronavirus pandemic remains a problem for the world. The total number of cases worldwide has surpassed 130 million. The rate of daily infections has returned to the highs from January this year.
Brazil and India are currently experiencing the biggest daily increases in the number of coronavirus cases, both confirming upwards of 80,000 infections yesterday.
The trend is also worrying in France, which had over 50,000 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, the highest since November. Italy and Germany both had over 20,000 new cases. Poland experienced its second highest all-time daily number yesterday with over 35,000 new infections.
Turkey also hit an all-time maximum of daily infections yesterday, confirming over 40,000 new cases. This brings its total up to 3.3 million, which places it in the eight spot for most cases in the world, right between Italy and Spain, who were some of the most heavily affected countries in Europe in 2020.
