Unemployment, IEA Report, US Retail Sales

15 Mei 2020

The main event of the yesterday was the publication of the next figures on jobless claims in the United States. Experts expected growth by 2.5 million, but in fact the growth amounted to almost 3 million.

Thus, the situation in the US labor market continues to deteriorate. This is supported by the fact that Goldman Sachs revised its forecast for unemployment rate from 15% to 25%. We think there is no need to describe what does this mean for an economy where 2/3 of the GDP is generated by the consumer sector. So we continue to recommend sales in the US stock market.

The picture for the world in general continues to be extremely sad. According to UBS Group AG analysts, 2020 will be the worst for the Chinese labor market over the last 2 decades. As expected in UBS, the number of jobs in China by the end of the year will be reduced by 10 million (as a rule government expects increase in the number of jobs by 10 million).

IEA published its monthly oil market report. On the whole, it can be called relatively optimistic in the sense that forecasts for oil demand were improved (it will decrease not by 9.3 million b / d, but by 8.6 million b / d), while it was noted that supply in May will sharply decrease (by 12 million b / d) to 88 million, which is the minimum value for the last 9 years. In general, the fundamental background for oil continues to be quite positive, and we continue to hold our medium-term purchases.

Friday promises to be the busiest day of the week in terms of macroeconomic statistics. Key data - German and Eurozone GDP for the first quarter, US retail sales for April. Markets that have already lost confidence this week are at risk of becoming depressed, as April retail sales data in the US will almost certainly fail (April is a peak of lockdown in the US), and the first quarter in the Eurozone was clearly not the most successful.