Forex Today: Stocks, Gold, Commodities Lower as Greenback Rising

Today’s Asian session has seen another tough time for global stock markets, with both the Chinese HSI and the Nikkei 225 Index down by more than 1%. The key S&P 500 Index is also trading lower off-hours after making significant losses last week.Gold is falling in a downwards wave towards the 2-year low it made last week. Commodities in general are very weak.In the Forex market, the US Dollar remains strong following the release of US CPI (inflation) data last Tuesday which showed prices increased by 0.1% month-on-month when they had been expected to fall, creating an annualized rate of 8.3%, slightly down on last month’s 8.5% but higher than the 8.1% which had been expected. The 2-Year Treasury yield Friday reached a new multi-year high above 3.90% and there has been a deepening in the inverted yield curve. The New Zealand Dollar looks to be the weakest major currency right now.It is a public holiday today in the UK due to the Queen’s funeral, so the Forex market is likely to be quiet until the US session begins.There will be a release of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes later.Daily new coronavirus cases globally dropped last week for the ninth consecutive week, giving rise to the hope that the pandemic is finally over in any meaningful sense.It is estimated that 67.9% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 7.8% of the global population is confirmed to have contracted the virus at some time, although the true number is highly likely to be much larger. Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 617.2 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.06%. The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be significantly increasing only in Taiwan and Russia.