FINANCIAL MARKETS WEEKLY - Killing of a prominent Iranian general increased nervousness

With the turn of the year very low volatility was again present on financial markets in the past week. Towards the end of the week, the killing at the direct order of US President Trump of a prominent Iranian general increased nervousness. Crude oil price reacted by 3 % increase. For the whole week the global stock index MSCI All Country World remained on the previous week level. On the contrary fixed-income performed very well as the global index gained 0.5 %. Global financial markets has had a great year in 2019 when almost all major assets thrived. However valuations rose strongly and that is why returns will be probably much weaker in 2020. Hence optimism from the end of the year shall be tempered.

	Weekly change	YTD change	Value at the week end
Dollar index DXY	-0.1 %	0.5 %	96.84
Emerging markets FX index to USD	0.1 %	-0.3 %	1660
EUR/USD	-0.1 %	-0.5 %	1.12
EUR/CZK	-0.6 %	-0.2 %	25.36
USD/CZK	-0.5 %	0.6 %	22.75
Global equities (MSCI All Country World)	0.0 %	0.3 %
US (S&P 500)	-0.2 %	0.1 %	3235
Europe (STOXX Europe 600)	-0.3 %	0.6 %
Japan (Nikkei)	-0.8 %	0.0 %
Emerging markets (MSCI Emerging Markets)	0.5 %	0.8 %
China (CSI 300)	3.1 %	1.2 %
Czech Republic (PX)	0.2 %	0.5 %	1121
Global bonds (Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond)	0.5 %	0.3 %
Global government bonds	0.7 %	0.5 %
Global investment grade corporate bonds	0.4 %	0.4 %
Global speculative grade corporate bonds (high-yield)	0.2 %	0.1 %
Average global bond yield	-0.04 %	-0.05 %	1.40 %
US 10 year government bond yield	-0.09 %	-0.13 %	1.79 %
Germany 10 year government bond yield	-0.02 %	-0.09 %	-0.28 %
Czech Republic 10 year government bond yield	0.01 %	-0.02 %	1.62 %
Slovakia 10 year government bond yield	-0.03 %	-0.06 %	0.13 %
Brent crude oil	0.6 %	3.9 %	68.6
Gold	2.3 %	1.9 %	1552

Source: Bloomberg