Weekly Market Brief

30.1.2023 -4.2.2023

What happened this week in the financial markets?

The stock market ended the week on a positive note with favorable reports from
leading companies and a declining PCE figure. The S&P500 index rose by 2.56%, the
Nasdaq by 4.43%, and the Dow Jones by 1.85%. The VIX index showed a substantial
decrease of 6.17%!

Macro:

USA’s Q4 GDP exceeded expectations with a growth of 2.9%, higher than the
predicted 2.6%. The economy has increased for three consecutive months,
following a decrease of 0.6% in September. The inflation rate from the GDP came in
at 3.5%, surpassing the forecasted 3.3%.
The PCE index, favored by the Fed for measuring inflation in the economy, showed
an increase of 5%, lower than the expected 5.5%. It had a monthly increase of
0.1% and the personal expenditure index decreased by 0.2%.
Sustainable product orders, a measure of American consumer spending on
essentials, showed a surprising increase of 5.6% annually in December,
exceeding expectations of only 2.5%. On a monthly basis, it decreased by 0.1%,
better than the expected decrease of 0.2%.

Important events this week:

• The Fed is set to raise interest rates 0.25% to 4.75% on Wednesday. The hike, 8th
  in a row, comes amid rising inflation. Markets predict another hike to reach 5%. Fed
  aims to balance economic growth and inflation control.
• The US employment data for Dec will be published on Friday, including jobless rate
  and employed people change. The tight job market with low unemployment is
  expected to continue, with a predicted 3.6% unemployment rate and 185k jobs
  added to the economy.
• On Friday, figures for the average wage per hour worked will be published, including
  growth over the past year and December. This is important as wage growth can
  lead to higher consumer spending and inflation. Expected growth is 4.3% annually,
  slower than last month’s 4.6%, with a monthly increase of 0.3%.

Stocks in the headlines this week:

• Tesla Tesla’s stock jumps 31% after strong financial report, CEO optimistic for 2023
  growth and didn’t sell Bitcoin holdings.
• Intel worth $116 billion, dropped 4% last week after releasing Q4 results that
  missed expectations and reducing its Q1 2023 outlook.
• IBM with a value of 121 billion dollars, beat expectations in 4Q by reporting
  revenues of 16.69 billion dollars and profit per share of 3.6 dollars, up 16%.
  However, the company also approved layoffs of 3,900 employees, about 1.5% of its
  workforce, due to economic slowdown and efficiency efforts.

Commodities:

• CL – The price of a barrel of oil closed on Friday at $79.3 resulting in a weekly
  increase of 2% in the past week.
• GOLD – The price of gold closed last Friday at $1,943 per ounce, reflecting a weekly
  decrease of 0.5%.

Crypto:

Bitcoin – The price of Bitcoin is at $23,250, The price of Bitcoin closed a weekly
increase of 0.5%.

Report published this week:

Overall, the market has had a phenomenal year thus far. The YTD (Year-to-Date)
performance of the major indices has been nothing short of impressive:

US INDICES:

EU INDICES:

ASIAN INDICES:

WORLD WIDE YTD: