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Prior was +12.5

Details:

• 6 month index: 6.9 vs 5.6 last month
• Capex index 6-month forward: 2.0 vs 13.4 last month
• Employment: 0.2 vs 19.7 last month
• Prices paid: 51.0 vs 48.3 last month
• New orders: -34.2 vs 8.7 last month
• Shipments: -9.1 vs 2.0 last month
• Unfilled orders: -1.1 vs 0.6 last month
• Delivery time: -2.6 vs 4.1 last month
• Inventories: -0.9 vs -5.7 last month
• Average workweek: -12.7 vs 8.7 last month

Look at that new orders number. It’s back to covid-era levels. They have only been worse twice: April 2020 and March 2009.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

• Prior month 1.501M (revised to 1.494M)
• Building permits 1.482M vs 1.446M expected
• Prior month 1.459M

These numbers are still within the range of the last two years. High rates are weighing on the housing market but it’s not really cracking meaningfully.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at www.forexlive.com.

“Had a very productive call with the President of Mexico yesterday. Likewise, I met with the highest level Japanese Trade Representatives. It was a very productive meeting. Every Nation, including China, wants to meet! Today, Italy!”

The little part citing China is what triggered a spike in risk assets. There are probably algos set to trade every positive China headline even if taken out of context.

We all know that both want to negotiate but nobody wants to make the first step.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at www.forexlive.com.

First of all, I think all the talk about the Fed losing independence can be ignored. It’s not going to happen. The chances are so low that it doesn’t even deserve the attention.

But let’s say it does happen, what would be the consequences?

Well, pretty much pure chaos. The extent of the damage to the economy cannot even be imagined.

Inflation expectations would de-anchor immediately, even if actual inflation stayed the same. The government would certainly pursue expansionary policies and that would increase inflation.

The US Dollar and US Treasuries would be avoided like the plague. Gold would literally rise “to the moon”. The stock market would experience the worst bear market in history. And the great recession and depression would be seen as nice periods in comparison.

The US Congress would never allow this to happen because there’s even no way back. There would be always the spectre of this happening again and the damage would be everlasting.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at www.forexlive.com.

Headlines:

• Dollar steadier as risk bounces a little ahead of European trading today
• Dow futures turn negative as UnitedHealth lowers annual profit forecast
• China maintains it is open to negotiations with US on trade, calls for mutual respect
• Japan finance minister expresses deep concern over impact of Trump’s tariffs
• Trump: Jerome Powell is always too late and wrong
• The ECB is 100% going to cut today but what’s expected for the other central banks?
• ECB set to deliver its sixth consecutive 25 bps rate cut, eyes on restrictive language
• What are analysts saying ahead of the ECB policy decision later?
• BOJ’s Nakagawa: Difficult to assess the impact of US tariffs at the moment
• Germany March PPI -0.7% vs -0.1% m/m expected
• Reminder: Market closures in observance of the Easter break

Markets:

• USD leads, CHF lags on the day
• European equities lower; S&P 500 futures down 0.4%
• US 10-year yields up 3.2 bps to 4.311%
• Gold down 0.6% to $3,324.48
• WTI crude up 1.4% to $63.35
• Bitcoin up 0.2% to $84,489

It was a relatively quiet session in terms of headlines, with just some light market movements as well overall.

A slight bounce in the risk mood is keeping the dollar steadier and that held for the most part during the session. UnitedHealth reported poor Q1 earnings and slashed its profit outlook and that dragged Dow futures down late on, weighing slightly on the market mood as well. Dow futures turned negative on the news, falling by over 1% with UnitedHealth of course comprising of roughly 9% of the index – the biggest in terms of weightage.

Still, S&P 500 futures are up 0.4% with tech shares leading the way. Nasdaq futures are up 0.7% currently.

In FX, the dollar is recovering a little bit of ground after the declines yesterday. EUR/USD is down 0.3% to 1.1365 with USD/JPY up 0.5% to 142.55 on the day. USD/CHF is continuing to keep off its recent lows, up 0.5% to 0.8170 on the day. Meanwhile, USD/CAD is up 0.3% to 1.3890 and AUD/USD down 0.2% to 0.6358 at the moment.

Elsewhere, the bond market continues to keep steadier while gold is easing back a touch after racing to fresh record highs yesterday. The precious metal is still holding well above $3,300 though, not showing much signs of letting up.

As things stand, it’s still about watching out for trade/Trump headlines while at the same time figuring out how the tariffs are going to keep weighing on the global economy during the interim.

For now, markets are keeping the calm. At this stage, it’s either we get some positive developments on trade first or hard data that shows the negative drag from tariffs first. If the latter comes earlier, that will be the next hammer to fall on risk sentiment. But if it is the former, then markets can start to look to grow to be more optimistic at least.

Coming up later, we’ll have the ECB policy decision and US weekly jobless claims to contend with as well.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

The post Ex-Dividend 18/4/2025 first appeared on IC Markets | Official Blog.

As a reminder, we’ll have market closures in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, as well as the UK in the coming two business days. It is that time of the year where the Easter Bunny is out to play for the weekend. In Europe, the Euronext, Xetra, and LSE are all closed as well as the TARGET services. So, that means extremely thin liquidity conditions during the upcoming sessions. It leaves only North America trading to observe normal market flows. To those celebrating, have a great break and enjoy the weekend!

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

• Need to roll out policy measures at critical timing, act early and swiftly
• Should deliver policies precisely, enhance communications with markets
• Should guide formation of clear, stable market expectations

His other remarks are pretty normal but the headline comment stands out a little. That appears to be a cryptic message perhaps on trade relations with a certain someone surely.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

Let’s dive straight into the calls (h/t @ MNI Markets).

Deutsche Bank- 25 bps rate cut- “Even with the US tariff pause, the arguments now clearly favour a cut”- “The hit to growth from reciprocal tariffs, uncertainty and financial conditions likely exceeds what the ECB
was expecting”- “We expect the “meaningfully less restrictive” language to remain in April despite another rate cut. In
combination with the view that inflation is returning to target, this has an implicit dovish leaning”- ECB will keep the data-dependent, meeting-by-meeting approach to
determining the “appropriate stance”- “We think the risks of disinflation are being underestimated, and we hold our 1.5% terminal rate view”

Societe Generale- 25 bps rate cut but not ruling out a 50 bps move “to more clearly exit the restrictive stance”- “The downside risk to growth and inflation should dominate any worries over one-off increases
in the price level”- “The message after the April
meeting will be much more focused on the disinflationary forces, stemming from weaker global and US
growth, lower energy prices, a stronger EURUSD, and a higher risk of China redirecting excess capacity
into Europe”- “While we would argue that neutral is likely somewhat higher than the ECB’s 1.75-2.25% in normal
conditions, we think there is margin for the ECB to err on the downside under the current conditions”

UBS- 25 bps rate cut- “We do not think the ECB will cut rates by 50 bps, given the current uncertainty over the degree
of EU retaliation (which would likely be inflationary), the duration of US tariffs at current levels (i.e. the
success of future negotiations) and – more broadly – the broader impact on Eurozone growth and inflation”- “We expect the ECB to follow up with another 25 bps rate cut to 2.0% in June”- “Another 25bp rate cut to 1.75% in July is not our base case scenario right now”- “That said, we think the hurdle towards a July cut to 1.75% is not very high, particularly if US tariffs appear
more permanent and the EU retaliates only to a limited extent, generating little additional inflation pressure;
a strong EUR and higher bond yields would also prove disinflationary and help the ECB to cut”

Goldman Sachs- 25 bps rate cut- “ECB to acknowledge the growing downside risks to growth and note that the
trade tensions raise the uncertainty around the inflation outlook”- “We expect the ECB to
remove the “meaningfully less restrictive” phrase but keep the remaining policy language unchanged”- “During the press conference, we look for President Lagarde to signal more concern around growth due to
the trade tensions but remain non-committal on future policy steps”- A 25 bps rate cut in June is “highly probable” before another expected rate cut in July- “Our updated ECB scenario analysis includes a downside scenario where the policy rate falls to 0.75% (for
example, if the euro area enters a deeper downturn) and an upside scenario where the policy rate remains
at 2% (for example, if the US administration reverts to narrower tariffs)”- Sees a 50% probability of
baseline, 30% upside and 20% downside in the scenario analysis

Commerzbank- 25 bps rate cut- ECB will probably describe its
current monetary policy as “neutral”- “We now expect interest rates to be cut
not only in June but also in September” due to US tariffs- “ECB is likely to be cautious in its communication and leave all doors open”, no kind of forward guidance is expected- “We
assume that monetary policy will no longer be described as “becoming meaningfully less restrictive”, rather it is likely to have reached the “neutral range” according to policymakers”

This is a very neat summary of the consensus view going into the meeting later:

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

UnitedHealth pulls the heaviest weight in the Dow and so them slashing earnings outlook for the year while reporting an earnings miss in Q1 is weighing on the index. Dow futures have erased earlier gains to be down 0.8% now with UNH shares indicated down by over 16% in pre-market trading.

This is also weighing slightly on the broader market mood with S&P 500 futures seeing gains chipped away to 0.6%. Tech shares remain buoyed with Nasdaq futures up 1.0% at the moment. The drag on UnitedHealth is also weighing on other health insurers such as Elevance and CVS Health. The former is down by 8% while the latter is down nearly 9% respectively in pre-market trading.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

• Powell is always too late and wrong.
• Fed should have lowered interest rates long ago.
• Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough.

Trump has been criticising Powell since his first term. Powell’s term expires in May 2026.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at www.forexlive.com.

The rate decision is going to be rather straightforward, with the ECB set to cut key policy rates by 25 bps today. So, is there anything else to watch out for as the central bank delivers the same decision for a sixth consecutive time? Let’s take a look.

The thing that will be scrutinised heavily from the statement today will of course be this part. The ECB in March tweaked their language on restrictiveness in saying that “monetary policy is becoming meaningfully less restrictive”. The previous statement before that said “monetary
policy remains restrictive”.

So, are they about to change that up again in April amid the mixture of risks from US tariffs?

That’s the key thing to look out for in the statement, in seeing if the ECB has the appetite to switch so hastily to a more neutral stance.

But even so, don’t expect that to change the bigger picture outlook for the central bank though. Amid downside risks to the economy, they are still expected to deliver more rate cuts down the road. The question though is by how much more?

The issue here is that all of this hinges on how Trump’s tariffs are going to play out in the weeks/months ahead. And even if not directly regarding trade with the EU, even US-China relations will have a spillover impact. So, that needs to be considered as well.

In that lieu, the main takeaway is that the ECB will surely continue their meeting-by-meeting approach. And that’s basically the more important thing right now.

As such, even with the removal of the phrase “monetary policy is becoming meaningfully less restrictive” it doesn’t mean a material change to the ECB’s next steps. They still have to take things one meeting at a time considering what’s at stake.

In essence, the ECB will not offer much of any forward guidance and stick to a more flexible i.e. data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach.

Besides that, the only other thing today will be to watch out for Lagarde’s press conference. I wouldn’t expect too much though as I would wager that Lagarde is going to place a lot of emphasis on this one word: uncertainty. She will likely stress a great deal on that and avoid committing to anything.

No doubt she will be questioned as well on any removal of the above phrase as she said before this that:

“It’s not just, you know, an innocuous little change, it’s a change that has a certain meaning. We are now moving by having our monetary policy is
becoming meaningfully less restrictive to a more evolutionary approach.”

So, to move on from that so quickly will definitely invite some jabs from the press. But at this stage, she can easily dodge that by pointing to Trump’s tariffs and the uncertain nature of its impact on the euro area economy and inflation.

There’s a slight chance that markets could take all of this to mean a more hawkish stance. But if Lagarde plays her cards right, markets will be left waiting on trade developments in the aftermath – the same as before.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.