Undoubtedly, the FOMC meeting was the highlight of the past week’s economic calendar. The Federal Reserve returned to work after a holiday break and aroused a lot of market emotions. The Fed announced a beginning of the balance sheet reduction process. Moreover, the bank planned to raise interest rates one more time this year and next three times in 2018. A few months ago this had been a basis scenario, whereas a series of mixed data from the US economy and the devastating hurricanes made investors skeptical about the further pace of Fed’s monetary tightening. Thus dollar appreciated against euro noticeable last week. The message of the Federal Reserve adversely affected the stock market sentiment in the second half of the past week. During the last five trading days, the DJI increased by 0.4%, the S&P500 soared by 0.1% and the NASDAQ fell by 0.3%.

Weekly comment MM Prime TFI  - September 18, 2017

The last week’s events did not support the stock market sentiment. At the beginning of the past week there appeared another disturbing news from North Korea and then the hurricanes in the US intensified market fears about their potential economic effects for the economy. Moreover, it cannot be ruled out these might be very severe. As a result, during the whole past week, the NASDAQ fell by 1.2%, the DJI went down by 0.9% and the S&P500 decreased by 0.6%. In Europe, the British FTSE250 declined by 0.9%, the French CAC40 shrank by 0.2%, while the German DAX proved to be mainstay of growths (+1.3%). After all, the ECB Governing Council meeting deserved the event of the week name. Unlike to the expectations of some investors, the meeting did not bring any changes in the monetary policy.

Weekly comment MM Prime TFI  - September 4, 2017

Last week did not bring a major settlement of the situation on the world indices. The direction was not clearly defined. In Europe, the changes were marginal - DAX gained a symbolic 0.02%, while the French CAC40 lost 0.19%. The correction is trying to exit the US stock exchange and last week may be counted among the successful. The DJIA gained 0.62%, the S&P500 went up 0.72%, and the tech companies showed the highest growth with NASDAQ ended up by 0.79%. The market was primarily expected to face the two most prominent US and eurozone monetary policyists at the Jackson Hole Symposium. While the reaction of the market was positive, it is certainly possible to feel inadequate. Both Mario Draghi and Janet Yellen avoided referring to monetary policy issues, and this was expected only by the head of the Fed. However, the market found that prudent statements testify to the lack of willingness to speed up rates increase in the US. The main reaction, however, was focused on the currency market, where the eurodolar strongly appreciated.