Overnight, Governor Pan of the People’s Bank of China announced in a speech that China’s central bank plans to introduce a number of stimulus measures designed to help boost China’s economy and real estate sector including cuts to interest rates and a 0.50% reduction in the reserve requirement ratio for banks.
Signs that the global economy has been slowing, meanwhile, continued yesterday with US and Japanese Flash Manufacturing PMI, plus US Flash Service PMI all slowing from last month and coming in worse than expected.
To fight slowing economies, some central bankers have been cutting interest rates including the Federal Reserve Board, European Central Bank and Bank of Canada earlier this month. Last night, the Reserve Bank of Australia, however, kept its overnight rate steady at 4.35%. Bank of Canada Governor Macklem speaks later today.
The prospect of a slowing Chinese economy has been weighing on commodity sentiment and resource demand expectations for some time. Today’s stimulus speech has ignited a rebound in commodity prices, sending US Crude Oil up 2.6%, and Copper up 1.4%. Meanwhile in currency action, the Canadian Dollar is up 0.2%, the Japanese Yen is down 0.3%, and Gold is holding steady near all-time highs.
Chinese equities soared overnight on the stimulus hints. Both Hong Kong and Shanghai finished with big gains of about 4.1% today. Europe is also picking up with the Dax climbing 0.6% and the FTSE gaining 0.3%. US index futures are flat, digesting yesterday’s US index gains of 0.1% to 0.3%.