Since today is Thursday, we expect the jobless claims, both initial and continuing, from the United States, together with a bunch of non-manufacturing PMI reports. These will set the stage for the more important fundamentals to be released tomorrow - the unemployment rate and payrolls for August.
Earlier today the Markit PMIs were published in Europe. Both the eurozone as a whole and Germany in particular performed better than the forecasts, but growth is still not especially fast in Europe.
The EU is threatened by a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Yesterday marked another day of record daily increases in Covid-19 cases since the height of the pandemic: Spain declared over 8,500, and France 7,000 new cases. Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom all had over 1,000 new coronavirus confirmations.
Considering the resurgence of the virus in France, which was one of the hardest hit countries in the EU, President Macron came up with a timely stimulus package of 100 billion euro, which helped boost the prospects of European stock indices for the day.
The global total surpassed 26.2 million. The rate of infection in the United States, the most affected country with 6.3 million cases, seems to have stabilized around 40,000 this week. There was a daily spike in Brazil as well, as the country declared close to 50,000 new Covid-19 cases yesterday. India had also taken the crown for the highest daily increase to day, declaring more than 82,000 new coronavirus cases yesterday, adding to a total of 3.8 million.
Aside from Brazil, the virus is strong in several other South American countries. Argentina is now the most notable of these, with over 10,000 new cases yesterday. The outbreaks in Peru and Colombia are also still quite severe.
Today US stock indices are on the downturn due to the expected influx of employment reports. The dollar, however, is gaining in value once again, especially against the euro, which weakened due to yet another slowdown in Europe.
