The weekend was eventful with the unexpected rebellion of the Wagner Group against the Kremlin. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s men, who fight for Putin in the deadliest battles in Ukraine walked towards Moscow this weekend as Prigozhin accused the Kremlin of not providing enough arms to his troops. But suddenly, Prigozhin called off the attack following an agreement brokered by Belarus and agreed to go into exile. The Kremlin took back control of the situation, but we haven’t seen Vladimit Putin, or Prigozhin talk since then. The Wagner incident may have exposed Putin’s weakness, and was the most serious threat to his rule in two decades. It could be a turning point in the war in Ukraine. But nothing is more unsure. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, there are no indications that Wagner fighters are retreating from the battlefield.
The first reaction of the financial markets to Wagner’s mini coup was relatively calm. Gold for example, which is a good indication of market stress at this kind of moment, remained flat, and even sold into the $1930 level. The dollar-swissy moved little near the 90 cents level. Crude oil was offered into the $70pb level, as nat gas futures jumped more than 2% at the weekly open, and specific stocks like United Co. Rusal International, a Russian aluminum producer that trades in Hong Kong, gapped lower at the open but recovered losses.
Equities in Asia were mostly under pressure from last week’s selloff in the US, while US futures ticked higher and are slightly positive at the time of writing.
The Wagner incident will likely remain broadly ignored by investors, unless there are fresh developments that could change the course of the war in Ukraine. Until then, markets will be back to business as usual. There is nothing much on today’s economic calendar, but the rest of the week will be busy with a series of inflation reports from Canada, Australia, Europe, the US, and Japan.
Except for Japan, where the Bank of Japan (BoJ) doesn’t seem urged to hike the rates, higher-than-expected inflation figures could further fuel the hawkish central bank expectations and add to the weakening appetite in risk assets.
The Federal Reserve (Fed) will carry its annual bank stress test this week, to see how many more rate hikes the baking sector could take in and the potential for changes in capital requirements down the road. The big banks are likely not very vulnerable to higher capital requirements, yet the profitability of the US regional banks could be at jeopardy and that could cause investors to remain skeptical regarding the US banking stocks altogether. Invesco’s KBW bank ETF slipped below its 50-DMA, following recovery in May on the back of decidedly aggressive Fed to continue hiking rates, and stricter requirements could further weigh on appetite.
Zooming out, the S&P500 is down by more than 2% since this month’s peak, Nasdaq 100 lost more than 3% while Europe’s Stoxx 600 dipped 3.70% between mid-June and now on the back of growing signs that the aggressive central bank rate hikes are finally slowing economic activity around the world. A series of PMI data released last Friday showed that activity in euro area’s biggest economies fell to a 5-month low as manufacturing contracted faster and services grew slower than expected. The EURUSD tipped a toe below its 50-DMA last Friday but found buyers below this level. Weak data weakens the European Central Bank (ECB) expectations, but that could easily reverse with a strong inflation read given that the ECB is ready to induce more pain on the Eurozone economy to fight inflation.
Across the Channel, the picture isn’t necessarily better. Both services and manufacturing came in softer than expected. And despite the positive surprise on the retail sales front, retail sales in Britain slumped more than 2% in May, due to the rising cost of living that led the Brits back from loosening their purse string. One thing though. UK’s largest lenders agreed to give borrowers a 12-month grace period if they missed their mortgage payments as a result of whopping costs of keeping their mortgages due to the aggressively rising interest rates. Unless an accident – in real estate for example, the Bank of England (BoE) will continue hiking the rates and reach a peak rate of 6.25% by December. The only way to slow down the pace of hikes is to find a solution to the sticky inflation problem. And because the BoE has limited influence on prices, Jeremy Hunt will meet industry regulatory this week to discuss how they could prevent companies from taking advantage of inflation and raising prices more than needed, which adds to inflationary pressures through what we call ‘greeflation’. But until he finds a solution, the BoE has no choice but to keep hiking and the UK’s 2-year gilt yield has further to run higher, whereas the widening gap between the 2 and 10-year yield hints at growing odds of recession in the UK, which should also prevent the pound from gaining strength on the back of hawkish BoE. Cable will more likely end up going back to 1.25, than extending gains to 1.30.
