Euro Boosted by Ukraine Peace Talks

Peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey see both sides make gestures, boosting the Euro.

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1. Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey will resume Friday, with Ukraine proposing to agree to its neutrality while working towards EU membership, while Russia promised it would scale down its assault on Kiev and Chernihiv, although Ukraine and the US are sceptical Russia will really implement its stated action. News of the talks has helped boost the Euro and the Ruble, which again rose strongly against other currencies yesterday to approach where it was before the invasion.
2. The Forex market is now dominated by strength in the Euro and to a lesser extent the US Dollar, with the commodity currencies (AUD, NZD, and CAD) looking weak. Stock markets are stable to weakly negative while the prices of most commodities have eased.
3. The price of Crude Oil has fallen quite strongly again on news that the US is considering releasing a significant amount of its crude oil reserve in an attempt to dampen price rises and inflation.
4. Yesterday brought a release of the ADP Non-Farm Employment Change forecast with no surprises, which is 455k new jobs created, exactly the amount analysts had already been expecting.
5. US Final GDP data released yesterday came in slightly lower than expected, at an annualized increase of 6.9% compared to an earlier figure of 7.0%.
6. Today will see releases of Canadian GDP data and US Core PCE Price Index data.
7. Daily new coronavirus cases globally fell last week after rising for two weeks in a row.
8. The large city of Shanghai remains under lockdown due to rising coronavirus cases.
9. It is estimated that 64.4% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 6.2% of the global population is known to have contracted the virus at some stage.
10. Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 487.1 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.26%.
11. The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing only in Australia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Laos, Luxembourg, Malta, Samoa, Taiwan, Tonga, and Vanuatu.