FUNDAMENTAL AND TECHNICAL ANALYSIS REPORT

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In a blow to the PM, the third Japanese cabinet minister to resign in a month

Asian stock market closed red on Friday. The Shanghai Composite is down 0.58% at 3097.24 Overall, the Singapore MSCI is down 0.56% at 299.50. Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index is down 0.29% at 17922.54. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 is down 0.11% at 27899.99, while the Topix index is up 0.38% at 1967.03 South Korea’s Kospi is up 0.06% at 2,444.48. Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 0.23% at 7151.80.

Top News of the Day:

Japan’s internal affairs minister resigned on Sunday in connection with a funding scandal, becoming the third cabinet member to leave in less than a month in a severe blow to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s already shaky support.

Kishida’s approval ratings have sunk after the July assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe revealed deep and longstanding ties between ruling Liberal Democratic Party politicians and the Unification Church, a group that critics say is a cult.

Internal affairs minister Minoru Terada resigned to Kishida after media reports the premier was preparing to sack him. Kishida’s office could not be reached for comment on those reports.

Terada, under fire for several funding scandals, has acknowledged that one of his support groups had submitted funding documentation ostensibly signed by a dead person.

Kishida said he had accepted Terada’s resignation in order to prioritise parliamentary debate, including discussions on a second extra budget for the fiscal year ending in March.

Asked about the fact that three ministers have resigned since Oct. 24, Kishida said he would like to apologise.

“I feel a heavy responsibility,” he told reporters, adding that he planned to formally name Terada’s successor early on Monday. He is likely to nominate Takeaki Matsumoto, a former foreign minister, NHK public television said.

Market Summary as per 18/11/2022:

European equities Friday closing. The DAX futures contract in Germany traded up 1.16% at 14431.86, CAC 40 futures up 1.04% at 6644.46. UK 100 futures contract in the U.K. down 0.53 at 7385.52.

In the U.S. on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average Closed up 0.59% at 33745.69. The S&P 500 up 0.48% at 3965.34 and the Nasdaq 100 also up 0.0099% at 11146.06, NYSE closes 0.56% up at 15309.77.

Top Market News Today:

In the Forex market, GBPUSD up 0.22% at 1.1889. The USDJPY up 0.13% at 140.37 The USDCHF up 0.35 at 0.9548. EURUSD down 0.34% at 1.0324. EUR/GBP down 0.53% at 0.8685. The USD/CNY down 0.53% at 7.1198 at the time of writing.

In the Commodity market U.S. Gold futures down at 0.62% $1,752.00. Elsewhere, Silver futures down 0.02% at $20.975 per ounce, Platinum down 0.51% at $986.40 per ounce, and Palladium down 3.71% at $1935.50.

Brent Crude Oil down 2.27% at $87.74 per barrel.

In the Cryptocurrency Markets, Bitcoin at 16524.00 down 0.95%, Ethereum down 3.99% at 1167.83, Litecoin at 61.54 down 3.69%, at the time of writing.

Top Market Segment to Watch Out Today:

DISNEY: -Bob Iger is returning to Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) Co. as chief executive less than a year after he retired, a surprise comeback that coincides with the entertainment company’s attempt to boost investor confidence and profits at its streaming media unit.

Iger, who retired last year after 15 years as chief executive, has agreed to serve as CEO for two more years effective immediately, Disney said in a statement late on Sunday. He will replace Bob Chapek, who took over as Disney CEO in February 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, leading to park closures and restrictions on visitors globally.

Disney’s shares have fallen more than 40 percent so far this year, lagging the nearly 7 percent year-to-date drop in the broader Down Jones Industrial Average.

Economic News:

US: For all the tumult and disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. labour markets have come out on the other side not far from the strong conditions that prevailed before the crisis, a paper presented at a Boston Fed research conference said.

Almost all the hit the U.S. labour market took in 2020, when COVID-19 struck, was tied to temporary layoffs which were swiftly rescinded, said the paper presented on Saturday.

Adjusted for these temporary shifts, “the labour market remained surprisingly tight throughout the crisis, despite the dramatic job losses” and by the spring of this year had recovered and returned to extremely tight conditions.

“I think if we were going to see large scale changes, we would have seen them by this point,” said Lisa Kahn, an economics professor at the University of Rochester, who was one of the co-authors.

The U.S. unemployment rate rode a virtual rollercoaster in 2020. From a 3.5% reading in February of that year, it spiked to 14.7% in April of that year, before undergoing a much faster than expected recovery that has resulted in very low rates of unemployment — it stood at 3.7% last month — and very robust levels of job creation.

Fears the pandemic would cause deep and lasting damage to the economy generated a historically aggressive campaign of stimulus by the government and the Federal Reserve, as elected officials and central bankers were mindful that the weaker policy response to the Great Recession over a decade ago led to a slow recovery for the economy.

Euro Zone:

The European mobile towers market is “pretty much closed” as rising inflation makes it harder for companies to finance new deals and the availability of assets declines, the chief executive of Cellnex told the Financial Times.

“M&A activity is over. Material, inorganic growth for the next 24 months is over,” Tobías Martínez Gimeno told the newspaper in reference to the overall market.

Negative interest rates over the past few years meant that “money was almost free”, added the CEO of Cellnex, Europe’s largest mobile phone tower operator, allowing the company to buy up 130,000 towers across 12 countries.

When interest rates were low, and debt was cheap, mobile towers were among the most attractive assets in telecoms. But since June, the share prices of most tower groups have fallen as rising rates have driven up costs.