US stocks posted gains for last week, boosted by the recovering of global investor sentiment especially that death tolls globally eased, adding to signs that the pandemic was plateauing in the world. Also, US President Donald Trump promises investors by a potential drug that will be developed soon by Gilead to treat COVID-19 and that he plans to reopen the US economy. While the first-quarter earnings reports aren’t going well in the USA leading to increasing concerns over the extent of damage from the coronavirus outbreak.

Late on Thursday, Trump laid out guidelines to reopen US states in a staggered, three-stage approach, but his plan was thin on detail and left decisions largely up to individual states. After that, he followed by the announcements on easing restrictions in Germany, Italy, Spain and some other parts of Europe. This leading to recovering investors sentiments and hopes around the world and important gains in European and Asian stocks supported by hopes of a resumption of activity after weeks of lockdown. SO, Japan’s Nikkei and the European DAX indexes increased respectively last week by 2.05 percent and 0.58 percent.

The hopes of the crude oil prices stability by the OPEP summit with Russia by lowering the supply of crude oil by the main producers around the world haven’t led to a positive result. In fact, the crude oil prices still declining and record last week a decline by -14.43 percent at the price of 19.776 US dollars. This is explained by the lack of the demand for crude oil around the world amid weeks of lockdown also the US crude oil production that still out of control filling the market. This situation has led to a weakened US dollar because the US dollar is the money of transactions for the crude oil market. That means fewer transactions in the crude oil market lead to the decline of the US dollar demands by investors.

The Bitcoin (BTC/USD) price appreciate last week by 3.33 and fluctuating around $ 7136.4 showing more confidence by the investors and traders about the Bitcoin money that has large support and expecting higher value. In African currency markets, The Nigerian NAIRA was subject to a decline of 5.48 percent and exchanged at 385.00 US dollars due to the crude oil prices decline. The South Africa ZAR depreciated faces to the US dollar by 4.53 percent and ending last week at 18.76642 US dollars.

The last week main markets prices and variations

Market in Focus: 20 April – 24 April 2020
We have a list of high impact events this week. The publication of the events can leads to a strong movement or a trend for the related currencies. The discussion of the events impacts will be done within the daily FOREX report.

The publications that have a very significant theoretic impact are:

• CNY: The PBoC Interest Rate Decision is announced by the People ́s Bank of China. “Monday”.
• GBP: The ILO Unemployment Rate released by the National Statistics is the number of unemployed workers divided by the total civilian labor force. It is a leading indicator for the UK Economy. ”Tuesday”.
• CAD: The Retail Sales released by the Statistics Canada is a monthly data that shows all goods sold by retailers based on a sampling of retail stores of different types and sizes. ” Tuesday”.
• USD: The Existing Home Sales, released by the National Association of Realtors provide an estimated value of housing market conditions. ” Tuesday”.
• GBP: The Consumer Price Index released by the National Statistics is a measure of price movements by the comparison between the retail prices of a representative shopping basket of goods and services. ” Wednesday”.
• CAD: Consumer Price Index Core is released by the Bank of Canada. ”Wednesday”.
• EUR: The PMI monthly Composite Reports on Manufacturing and Services, released by Markit Economics, are based on a large number of business executives in private sector manufacturing and services companies. ”Thursday”.
• GBP: The PMI service released by both the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply and the Markit Economics is an indicator of the economic situation in the UK services sector. ”Thursday”.
• USD: The Initial Jobless Claims released by the US Department of Labor is a measure of the number of people filing first-time claims for state unemployment insurance. ”Thursday”.
• USD: The number of New Home Sales released by the US Census Bureau is an important measure of housing market conditions. ” Thursday”.
• USD: The Durable Goods Orders, released by the US Census Bureau, measures the cost of orders received by manufacturers for durable goods, which means goods planned to last for three years or more, such as motor vehicles and appliances. ” Friday”.