Bankinter: The main messages to come out of the 31 January meeting are: Growth outlook revised upwards after a solid Q4. Employment and wages remain strong but have moderated. The overall and underlying PCE readings will continue to decelerate in 2024, but are still off target. Uncertainty in the projections remains high, but has been reduced. Risks to the inflation projections stand out. Fed members put on the table the…
Banca March: China cuts the benchmark 5-year mortgage rate as part of the stimulus package to save the property sector. The LPR rate is designed by 20 commercial banks, which submit the proposal to the central bank every month. There are two horizons: the majority of outstanding loans are linked to the one-year benchmark, while the five-year rate directly affects mortgages. The latter has fallen from 4.2% to 3.95%, considered…
Alicia García Herrero (Natixis) | China’s banking sector technically opened up to full foreign competition in late 2019, as an aftermath of the Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing in 2017. The formal announcement has hardly changed the situation of foreign banks operating in China, which have a small and decreasing market share as well as lower profitability than domestic peers. Lower foreign participation than peers Despite the further opening, the share…
Link Securities | The US Clay County, in Florida, has awarded FCC a contract for the collection of municipal solid waste in the county, representing a portfolio of up to $420 million (about €392 million) for a 10-year term, plus two possible five-year extensions, the newspaper Expansión reports in today’s edition of the newspaper. FCC Environmental Services is one of the largest municipal solid waste management companies in the United…
BancaMarch| OPEC oil production has fallen by 350,000 b/d. According to the cartel’s report, crude oil production has fallen by 350,000 barrels per day between December and January to 26.3 million barrels per day. The main reduction is due to 162,000 barrels per day less from Libya, as a result of internal conflicts in the country. Kuwait and Iraq have also seen their production fall sharply by 109,000 and 98,000…
Bankinter: Inflation slowed less than expected in January, while core inflation also missed expectations. CPI was +3.1% year-on-year against +2.9% expected and +3.4% previously. Underlying was +3.9% versus +3.7% expected and +3.9% previously. Assessment: Negative data for stock markets and bonds, as the general rate returns to the deceleration trend, but less than expected. On the core side, the reading repeats December’s figure, when a marginal decline was expected. This…
Alicia García Herrero (Natixis) | The years of China’s high growth are past, as the world learned painfully in 2023. Notwithstanding the enormous tailwinds stemming from having exited Zero-Covid policies during 2022, the Chinese economy barely reached the underwhelming 5% GDP growth target cautiously set by Premier Li Qiang back in March 2022. The reasons for the very slow recovery of the Chinese economy in 2023 are both cyclical and…
Link Securities | Masdar, the Abu Dhabi Emirate’s renewables group, is considering acquiring a stake in Iberdrola’s (IBE) renewable assets in the United States, according to Expansión. It would be a first move following the deal sealed last December, when the two groups agreed on an alliance to analyse investment opportunities valued at €15 billion. The initial agreement contemplated investments in offshore wind and hydrogen projects in several countries, including…
Intermoney| On the oil front, news from Iraq. According to the country’s oil minister, Iraq, OPEC’s second largest producer, is meeting its production quota under the OPEC+ agreement that limits production to prop up the market. Iraq has capped production at 4 million bpd while exports are around 3.4 million bpd. Iraq is OPEC+’s second largest producer, but has a history of irregularity in meeting its quota with the cartel,…
Link Securities| According to data from the Department of Labor, the US consumer price index (CPI) for December was revised down to a monthly increase of 0.2%, from a preliminary increase of 0.3%. In addition, November’s figure was revised upwards to an increase of 0.2%, from the initial figure of a 0.1% increase, and October’s figure was also revised upwards by one-tenth, from an initial flat reading to an uptick…