Wednesday's Markets Update (May 24, 2023)

24 May 2023 by rate3

On Wednesday, FOMC minutes were released without any significant impact due to their dullness. Instead, traders shifted their attention to debt politics, causing NASDAQ (o:12481, c:12484) to decline and creating a gap at the opening. BTC (o:26693, c:26243) slid by 1.7 percent.

Fed is divided with officials expressing uncertainty about future policy tightening, according to the minutes from the FOMC meeting in May. Some participants noted that further tightening may not be necessary if the economy aligns with their outlook. However, others believed additional tightening would be warranted if inflation remains slow to reach 2%.

Other Markets Update:

South Korea: Producer prices rose by 1.6% YoY in April, marking the smallest gain since January 2021. The slower pace of cost increases was observed in agricultural, forestry, and marine products (0.5% vs 4.4% in March); electric power, water, and gas (18.7% vs 28.7%); and services (2.9% vs 3.1%). Meanwhile, manufacturing product costs fell (-1.6% vs +0.5%). On a monthly basis, the producer price index dipped 0.1% compared to a 0.1% increase in March.