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Israel Ceasefire in Gaza fairly predictable, the assault has gone on for a sufficiently long time to serve most political objectives of the warring parties.  As such it is a sustainable halt to hostilities, repeating the cycle we’ve seen numerous times in the past. There are two fights going on here, on is technological and the other political. Israel have struck Hamas very harshly, depleting its stockpiles and damaging its infrastructure.  It has also demonstrated its technological capabilities to defend Israel from rocket attacks (for the most part) — Hamas were not able to overwhelm Iron Dome despite their best efforts.

The latest batch of Google mobility data, which take us up to 13th March, hints at a slight slowdown in the rate of improvement, amid some setbacks in some of the individual countries we survey.  But this looks like ebb and flow and doesn’t detract from the underlying trend, which remains one of improvement.

As we move into 2021, we are getting a clearer picture into the extent of the slowdown in economic activity that the resurgent Coronavirus has triggered.  Although the Google mobility indices were already indicating a sharp deterioration, the scale of the decline reported through to the turn of the year was exaggerated by holiday effects, as we noted last time.  Data through to the 8th of January, which was released yesterday, gives us a clearer picture of how things stand.  And while it is not quite as bleak as over the Christmas and New Year period, the data still paints a fairly poor picture of global economic health.

China

7th January, 2021 » China December FX Reserves

December saw a further solid increase in Chinese FX reserves, the headline holdings number rising US$38.03bn m/m to US$3,216bn.  Again more than half of the rise can be attributed to valuation adjustments as the US dollar continued to depreciate against the balance of the PBoC’s reserve holdings.

The re-acceleration of Covid infections has hit mobility hard over the past two weeks.  Although there are clearly seasonal factors at work (which the Google data series do not account for), we’ve clearly seen a pronounced deterioration in both mobility and economic activity above and beyond what could have been normally expected. This has been concentrated in Europe, with a particularly severe drop in Germany where our economic activity measure suggests things are even worse than at the peak of the crisis last April.  Italy and the UK have also registered steep falls, while Spain and France have seen more modest drops.

China

8th December, 2020 » China November FX Reserves

China recorded a further reserves build during November, total holdings rising by US$50.51bn to US$3,718bn.  Nearly half of the increase can be accounted for by FX effects, specifically the effect of a weakening of the dollar compared to the other components of the reserves basket.

We’ve seen a further downturn in the European mobility, as national lockdowns continue to bite, with the UK, France and Italy all falling significantly over the past seven days.  Spain and Germany have been steadier, helped by the fact that they’ve been able to bend the Covid infection curve, with new cases rolling over and doing so from lower infection levels.  Looking at things globally the picture looks more balanced, European weakness offset by ongoing improvements across Asia and in the larger emerging markets.

China

7th October, 2020 » China September Reserves

China’s September reserve numbers showed a modest decline to US$3.143trn from US$3.165trn in August.  And nearly all of this can be accounted for by FX valuation adjustments.  Given the large trade and current account surplus China is currently running though this still implies ongoing outflows of capital, with our rough calculations pointing to an annualised outflow of US$200bn.

China

7th September, 2020 » China August FX Reserves

Slight increase in Chinese FX reserves in August, the $10.2bn m/m gain taking total holdings to $3.165trn.  But the build should have been far greater based on exchange rate changes and balance of payment flows.  Indeed, adjusting for FX valuation changes reserves actually fell again slightly (for the third consecutive month).

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