Eurozone CPI, Canada PPI, U.S. Industrial Production

While there was increased volatility around the time the European Central Bank (ECB) delivered its monetary policy decision, overall the EUR/USD rate stayed the course and continued to recover from the mayhem of the previous day and reached by Friday morning again levels close to 1.065.

The ECB hiked rates as expected by 50 basis points in the decision delivered on Thursday. However, the central bank did not outline a clear path forward, though it did indicate that the current rate of inflation is still seen as problematic. In regards to the turmoil in the banking market in the U.S. as well as what happened with Credit Suisse, the ECB sought to calm down the tensions by clarifying that it also was ready to provide liquidity if needed to avoid a situation like in 2008, when during the earlier stages of the international financial crisis banks started collapsing.

On Friday morning Italian trade balance statistics and eurozone consumer price index (CPI) data can be expected.

Gold traded the last couple of days within a fairly steady range, moving towards $1,930 in the morning hours on Friday. Silver also traded fairly steady below $22, while there were some diverging market moves in the platinum and palladium markets with the latter trading again lower though still up on a weekly basis given the steep upside during the session on Monday, while platinum started to make a recovery and is also trading higher on a weekly basis for now.

On Friday as usual weekly Commitment of Traders statistics from the U.S. CFTC can be expected, where also net speculative positions of traders in futures on different underlying including gold, silver, copper and others will be disclosed.

Oil prices stabilised on Thursday and did not test any further low after the significantly decline in market prices during the first three days of the week. Still, WTI crude oil trades significantly lower on a weekly basis for now mostly in the range between $68 and $69 per barrel.

While for now there has not been any clear response from OPEC and the associated countries in OPEC+, market participants might have also considered the meeting of the Russian and Saudi energy ministers in Riyadh as reported by Reuters, as a sign that further actions cannot be ruled out.

As usual on Friday the U.S. Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count statistic will be published. Last week the activity level further declined to yet another low since the autumn of last year with only 590 oil rigs reported in operation.

For once this week, equities performed clearly bullish with the US 500 index facing resistance only by the 4,000-level and a similarly positive sentiment seen among other indices like the US Tech 100 and US 30. Bank stocks (US Banks ETF +3.19%) made a strong recovery. An even stronger performance could be observed in the chip sector (US Semiconductors ETF +4.27%), as the ETF raced to a new one month high, given its comparably steady performance even during the first half of the week when markets were in turmoil. AMD (+8.23%) and Intel (+6.49%) were both in the top 3 best-performing components of the S&P 500 index as AMD even reached a new record since August 2022.

FedEx rallied by more than 11 per cent during the extended session after the company’s bottom line results for the fiscal Q3 were better than anticipated and the company raised its earnings guidance for 2023 to $14.6 to $15.2 per share from $13 to $14.

On Friday Chinese electric vehicle company XPeng will publish its quarterly results.