Tag: inflation scare

It was a horrible ‘Black Friday’ for the Indian markets that saw an across-the-board sell-off. The S&P BSE Sensex shaved off over 1,400 points in intra-day deals. Its counterpart on the National Stock Exchange, the Nifty50 index, lost over 400 points. The negative sentiment today(26th Nov.2021) in the Indian markets was on account of weak global cues. Most Asian markets were a sea of red with Japan’s Nikkei down 2 percent and Straits Times slipping nearly one percent. Shanghai Composite, Kospi, and Taiwan were down 0.2-0.4 percent, each. The US markets, however, were shut on account of the Thanksgiving holiday. This weak sentiment across Asian markets was triggered by fears of a sooner-than-expected rate hike by the US Federal Reserve (US Fed). Investors and traders, according to analysts, now expect the US central bank to raise rates faster on the back of the recently released FOMC minutes. Read more

India’s demand for oil & gas has been cut by S&P Global Platts amid the second wave of Covid cases that have triggered lockdowns across key states since the past few weeks. For 2021, it now pegs the oil demand growth at 350,000 barrels per day (b/d), down from a forecast of 485,000 b/d made in February – translating into a fall of nearly 28 percent. India's city gas demand, Platts said, could drop by 25 – 30 percent in the coming months. However, once the lockdowns are lifted, Platts expects the pent-up demand to get released, which in turn will act as a catalyst for economic growth and trigger a demand uptick for oil & gas in the country. Besides India, the demand forecast for 2021 has been revised down for Western Europe and Latin America due to more restrictions stemming from the second and third waves of Covid. Brent oil prices, WU said, will peak in mid-2021 at over $70 per barrel. Read more

Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies in his weekly note to investors, GREED & fear warned investors for the biggest inflation scare since the 1980s. “For now investors should be prepared for the biggest inflation scare since the early 1980s, and wait to see how the (US) Fed reacts. In the meantime, Treasury bonds are likely to sell off more, and cyclical stocks rally more, before any such tapering scare,” Wood said. That said, he believes that if inflation really does return on a longer-term basis, it would mean that equities and bonds would become positively correlated on the downside - that is they will both go down in price together. The return of inflation fears has been stoked again by the rise in commodity prices, especially oil, which has jumped over 90 percent from its March 13 level of $35 a barrel (bbl.) to around $70/bbl. now. Read more