Archive

Oil: When The Facts Change…

• Changing ‘facts’ in the Middle East and more widely are making prospects for the price of oil even more murky, as is underlined by the wide range of forecasts among market analysts. What is clear, however, is that the escalation in Iran/Israel tensions has skewed risks firmly to the upside.

By Alastair Newton

Cipollone - Innovation, integration and independence

Speech by Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the ECB conference on “An innovative and integrated European retail payments market”

In his speech, Piero Cipollone highlights the progress made in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) in addressing the fragmentation in non-cash payments. However, he points out that SEPA has fallen short in digital payments, particularly at the point of interaction, such as in-store, mobile, and e-commerce payments. This fragmentation hampers competition, innovation, and resilience in the European payments market. Cipollone emphasizes the need for a comprehensive vision that encompasses both public and private solutions to further integrate European payments and reduce dependencies on non-European players. He discusses the importance of the digital euro project, which aims to provide a digital form of cash with pan-European reach and comprehensive payment solutions. Additionally, he emphasizes the need to strengthen the "classic SEPA" framework and the deployment of instant payments. Cipollone concludes that addressing the challenges in the retail payments sector requires industry readiness and cooperation between public and private sectors.


Positivity: 85
Uncertainty: 70

Singapore CPI Inflation 2.7% y-o-y (consensus 3.0%) in Mar-24

- Singapore's CPI inflation in March 2024 dropped to 2.7% y-o-y, lower than the market consensus of 3.0%, indicating a surprisingly steep moderation of price pressures.
- The inflation rate stands 1.34 percentage points below the one-year average, highlighting a persistent disinflationary trend in Singapore.

Policy Tightness is Gradations of Weak

• The PMIs mostly revealed surprise resilience in April, albeit with the US disappointing. Divergent surprises may reflect excessive spread changes in policy expectations.
• Residual seasonality may exaggerate current strength and unwind in the summer, but stability in unemployment trends still suggests global monetary policy is not that tight.
• Persistent excess demand requires tight conditions to be sustained. The BoE MPC seems desperate to cut, but resilience should delay it, including relative to Fed pricing.

By Philip Rush