Forex Today: Risk-Off tightens grip

A world recession or possibly even depression from the pandemic seems inevitable, with Goldman Sachs predicting a 34% decline in the U.S. Q2 annual GDP

• The price of crude oil continues its consolidation just above $ 25 per share. Barrel.
• The price of gold continues its multi-week consolidation pattern of around $ 1,700 per share. Ounce, until a potential breakout.
• Equity markets fell again yesterday, with the S&P 500 Index again unable to break past its 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level. US indices have recovered nearly 60% of their losses, which is technically important as a point of inflection. Many market analysts believe the bottom of this bear market has already reached, but other analysts are seeing further strong declines in stocks in the coming weeks and months. There is a strong disagreement in opinion.

• The rise in the world in new confirmed infections and deaths from the coronavirus pandemic seems to have peaked, at least for a first wave, though this may be at least in part due to the pandemic moving into South American countries that tend to have poorer reporting systems. The number of daily new cases globally has probably not decreased significantly. The overall reported deaths globally have been declining since April 18^th and daily new confirmed cases since April 24^th. Overall, confirmed new cases amount to more than 4.2 million with an average death rate of 6.85%. The pandemic epicenter is still located in the U.S.A., increasingly more outside than in New York, but it seems that the peak of this wave is probably already there, while this also looks safer for all European nations. However new cases appear to be plateauing and not really falling significantly in either U.S.A. and the U.K.
• A world recession or possibly even depression from the pandemic seems inevitable, with Goldman Sachs expecting a 34% decline in the U.S. Second quarter GDP and other analysts saw a 30% unemployment rate in the near future. If correct, these will be the worst such figures seen since the 1930s, but it should be noted that many analysts continue to see a far better outlook for the U.S. unemployment. The WTO has projected global trade to fall by a third. U.S.A. now sees a 15% unemployment rate and a decrease of 1^st Q GDP or 4.8%.
• New York City data suggests that 0.24% of the entire city’s population recently died while infected with coronavirus, which is one of the strongest pieces of hard evidence that the disease has a significantly higher mortality rate than any common flu. Similar data from Bergamo, Italy suggest an estimate of between 0.20% and 0.50%, indicating that allegations of coronavirus with a markedly lower IFR are unlikely to be accurate. With recent antibody studies suggesting that 21% of the city has been infected, this suggests an infectious mortality rate of almost 1%.
• The United Kingdom, France, Italy and some other nations (mostly in Europe) have begun to ease the restrictions when it becomes clear that the first wave peak has passed. The countries that seem to have suffered the least from this first wave are New Zealand (which is close to eliminating the disease completely), Australia, Norway, Austria, Greece and Israel.
• The incidence of new coronavirus infections appears to increase most rapidly in Russia, Brazil and India. Russia now has the second highest number of confirmed cases globally.
• While the vast majority of coronavirus cases confirmed are still in Europe and the U.S.A., with the U.S.A. accounting for about a third of all cases, Infections are starting to rise dramatically in South America, which now accounts for nearly a quarter of global deaths. The situation is particularly bad in Brazil, which now confirms more than 5,000 new cases and 800 deaths daily. President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, comparing coronavirus with influenza, has issued decrees trying to reopen the land ignored by state leaders.
• Forex markets are dominated by relative strength in the Japanese yen and the United States. Dollar, while the British pound looks like the weakest currency today.