Market Update
Clearly equity markets are very overbought in the short term and are well overdue for some pull back which would be very healthy as there are still many very uncertain factors to be considered and there is still a long way back to some sort of normality.
Some current economic releases of the US job openings and labour turnover indicated that the jobs market in the US has already bottomed. Job openings fell from a revised 6.01 million in March to 5.05 million in April, but separations (which includes layoffs and quits) fell from a record 14.64 million in March to 9.89 million people.
Currently all eyes are once again focussed on the Fed Reserve which is going to meet over the next couple of days. Investors do not expect much from the meeting and more Quantitative Easing is off the table for the time being.
Federal Reserve officials have already signalled plans to keep interest rates near zero for years and indicated that they were studying how to provide more support to a U.S. economy battered by the coronavirus and related shutdowns.
The European Central Bank has also been very supportive of the markets and just recently announced a further major bond-buying program opting for a larger than expected 600 billion Euro Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program and also extended the duration of their purchases to at least June 2021.