Talking Points:
- Markets are continuing to display a distinctive ‘risk-off’ tone as panic and fear are spreading around-the-globe.
- The British Pound is the most recent victim, as a dovish Bank of England has helped to diminish rate hike hopes for 2016; leading to significant Sterling weakness.
- Equity markets are showing no sign of receding from pain; and with so much aggressive selling taking place, traders still need to actively look for risk-efficient entries in the effort of avoiding an aggressive retracement triggering stops after selling at lows.
The open after an extended holiday-weekend in the United States did not bring a respite to the risk-off rallies that have plagued markets since the start of the New Year. Before traders in New York hit their desk to start the week, we already had another negative report out of China. This time it was GDP, as Chinese Q4 Gross Domestic Product printed at an annualized 6.8% print. This continued the trend when last quarter’s GDP came just shy of the 7% target for China, with a 6.9% print.
This speaks to the fear of a bigger slowdown in Asia. And as we can see on the GDP chart below, the question of whether or not China is slowing down isn’t really up for debate; that’s happening. The bigger question is how aggressively this slowdown is hitting, and perhaps more to the point – how much impact the rest of the global economy might feel from it.
Chart prepared by James Stanley; data derived from China NBS: National Data- GDP
--- Written by James Stanley, Analyst for DailyFX.com
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