How did the market react to soft US inflation?

13 Kas 2022

Huge, unexpected moves occurred across several markets after the US inflation report for October was released last Thursday. For those that missed the news, US inflation came in softer-than-expected at 7.7% (vs. 8.0% expected, and down from 8.2% in the previous month) suggesting that the US Federal Reserve's policy tightening has started to work its magic, and they might be able to start slowing the pace of its hikes moving forward. The market is firming toward a 50-basis-points rate hike from the US Fed in November now, after four consecutive 75-basis-points rate hikes. This is a scenario that some assets have rejoiced, and others lamented.

Confidence in the US dollar, as the only buy, has finally shown signs of wavering after the inflation print. The upside potential for the US dollar may be muted moving forward but we might have to wait until we see a sustainable trend in inflation cooling. Even so, DXY experienced its worst week since March 2020, falling almost 4% against a basket of its trading partners last week. More interestingly, the DXY fell -2.1% on Thursday alone, its largest daily loss in 13 years.

The forex pair that gained the most against the US dollar was the Japanese yen, up more than 5% on the week, and now trading comfortably below 140. The pound, euro, Aussie dollar, and NZ dollar all gained between 4% and 3% at the same time.

With the weakening US dollar, gold and silver climbed 5.4% to $1,770 per ounce (3-month high) and 4.1% to $21.7 per ounce (5-month high), respectively on the weekly timeframe.

Moving in line with metals, and against the US dollar, US stocks experienced a significant rally on Thursday and Friday. Thursday’s rally was its largest in 2 years with the tech heavy Nasdaq100 surging a phenomenal 7.2%, outpacing the S&P500 and the Dow gains. The Nasdaq was supported by a cratering in the US 10-year Treasury yields, which fell 30-basis-points to 3.8%.