Stock trading trends reveal global equities are losing steam. US Treasury yields fell from a more than 4-month high.

In markets, traders are waiting for the April US inflation data and a European Central Bank meeting.

In other stock trading trends, UK stock shifted high on April 9, boosted by commodity-linked stocks.

And finally, we take a look at Moderna’s stock price in a post-COVID world.

In this article, we examine top stock trading trends and provide valuable insights for all traders.

Stock Trading Trends: Global Equities

Tensions around global equity indices changed course on Tuesday morning as initial gains were pared and yields on US Treasuries pulled back from their highest level in more than four months.

Stock trading activity was pressured ahead of the release of key US inflation data and a European Central Bank meeting later in the week.

Meanwhile, oil futures again declined for a second consecutive day as hopes for a truce between Israel and Hamas weakened.

In the currency market, the dollar was also under pressure ahead of Wednesday’s inflation data, although the yen was in sight of its 40-year low, causing investors to remain on alert for possible intervention by Tokyo.

Stock trading trends: Big US Stocks Down

By midday Tuesday, big US stock indices were down, too, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, while the MSCI world equity index and Europe’s STOXX 600 index lost ground as well, as markets prepared themselves for central bank decisions.

With economic data stronger than expected and inflationary pressures showing little sign of going away, investors are pulling back on their expectations for a cut in US interest rates, with markets turning less and less certain about this June’s Fed meeting.

Stock trading trends: Sharp Drop in Treasury Yields

This reassessment is reflected in the sharp dropping of yields on US Treasury notes and bonds.

In the foreign currency market, only minor changes in the price of the dollar were registered against major currencies, while prices in the energy market continued to drop again.

Spot gold prices continued to rise, and new records continued to be set, as central bank gold purchases continued and geopolitical instabilities signaled shifts in commodity and stock trading trends as well.

Stock trading trends: UK FTSE

Britain’s FTSE 100 forged ahead on April 9 after shrugging off some early losses, as investors awaited key US and UK economic updates to say whether interest rates will rise again.

Having begun the session in positive territory, the FTSE 100, whose constituents are heavily weighted in commodities, had nudged up just 0.1% in early trading, while its more domestically oriented FTSE 250 counterpart had declined by the same amount.

Stock trading trends: Gold Price

Leading the way were precious metal miners, which were up 2.4% with gold prices buoyed to near record highs thanks to continuing strong buying by central banks.

Industrial metal mining companies were up 1.2% as activity in global manufacturing seemed poised to pick up steam with forecasts of weaker production in China.

The oil and gas index was up 1.1% with the likelihood of a ceasefire in the Middle East taking a bit of a blow as oil prices ticked upward on supply concerns.

Stock trading trends: Rate Cuts on the Agenda

This week, rates could be back on the agenda as investors wait for updates that could signal whether or not the world’s major central banks are ready to start cutting interest rates again.

On Tuesday, US inflation data will provide insights into the chances of a US rate cut.

Wednesday could see the European Central Bank cut rates for the first time in nearly a year. Meanwhile, UK gross domestic product (GDP) figures on Thursday will give an indication of how well the economy is performing.

Stock trading trends: UK Retail Sales

Meanwhile, UK retail sales grew at their fastest rate since August as an early Easter prompted a spate of food spending in March, though cold weather dented demand for other wares.

On the individual company front: major oil company BP ended the week with 1.8% gains in its share price on the back of an announcement that it expects first-quarter production to rise in oil and gas and in ‘low-carbon energy’.

The financial services company JTC was up 5.3% after the company reported that revenue was 28.7% higher than the previous year.

Stock trading trends: Moderna Shares

Shares of Moderna (MRNA.O) jumped 8% on April 9 after its personalised cancer vaccine – developed with Merck (MRK.N) – showed promise in an early-stage trial for certain types of head and neck cancer.

The vaccine, designed by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna and Merck’s Surrey, England lab, teaches the immune system to recognise and kill cancer cells according to their specific mutations.

Moderna and Merck are testing this experimental messenger RNA cancer vaccine as part of a combo treatment with Merck’s Keytruda to treat patients with one of the deadliest forms of skin cancer, melanoma.

Stock trading trends: Moderna Cancer Research

The results from the study of 28 patients were released on Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Annual Meeting in San Diego, where stock jockeys watch action.

The UK’s leading share indices closed up on Monday as gains in the mining sector after record prices for copper in Shanghai, and a jump in betting company Entain amid reports it could be bought, propelled the FTSE 100 0.4% higher, with the FTSE 250, the UK’s midcap index, closing 0.7% up.

Share prices for FTSE 100 giants such as the diversified miner Rio Tinto, the global trader Glencore and Anglo American, the world’s biggest producer of platinum and the No 2 miner of palladium, jumped by between 1.9% and 4.2%, as copper prices climbed amid robust data on Chinese manufacturing, one of the world’s biggest consumers of metals.

Stock trading trends: US Inflation Data

Attention among investors has now turned to US inflation and UK GDP data due for release this week, with investors forecasting some guidance on future monetary policy trends.

In the wake of stronger-than-expected US economic data, UK markets tumbled lower than anticipated last Friday as market participants started to pare back expectations for US Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.

Economists expect UK GDP data released this Friday to register 0.1% growth over February month-on-month (though actually increasing 0.2% in January).

Stock trading trends: UK Economic Outlook

A survey by Deloitte revealed that, for companies in the UK, worries about the outlook of the economy had fallen to their lowest since mid-2021; and yet this hasn’t translated into more investment.

Meanwhile, there was some other market interest ahead of the big financial numbers next week, with Entain seeing its shares jump 5.2% after the Sunday Times reported that private equity firms including Apollo were circling the betting and gaming giant.

Stock trading trends: Small Business Confidence

EasyJet rose 3.3% as UBS upgraded its price target on the airline, as stock trading plays move through the extraction pipeline.

Small-business confidence in the US declined in March to its lowest in more than 11 years, reflecting a sharp increase in concerns about inflation amid recent price hikes and recession fears, a survey showed on Tuesday.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)’s Small Business Optimism Index fell 0.9 point to 88.5, the lowest since December 2012, and the 27th month below the historical average of 98 in the 50-year history of the survey.

Suddenly, inflation became their top business concern: 25% of owners cited it, a couple of ticks higher than in February, as the cost of inputs and labour continued to climb.

A much larger percentage of firms raised their average prices quite a bit over the last month.

This jump in prices comes hot on the heels of early-year rises in consumer prices for finance, retail, wholesale, construction and transporation, along with a jump in the percentage of firms increasing compensation as a slower rate of hiring persists.

Such indicators might have an effect on stock trading in the short term but they capture movements in the economy more widely.

Small businesses’ hiring intentions in March, the NFIB said last week, are at a post-pandemic low despite a ‘severe shortage of workers at all skill levels’, in everything from transportation to construction to services.

According to the US government’s latest labour market report, released last Friday, employers added 303,000 jobs in March, dropping the unemployment rate to 3.8% from February’s rate of 3.9%.

Fed analysts expect Wednesday’s report on the consumer price index (CPI) to show that prices rose 0.3% in March, after rising 0.4% in February.

As a result, Fed analysts are estimating that overall inflation will pace up to 3.4% for March, up half a percentage point from March 2021, which registered 3.2%.

Inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target, and expectations are growing that the central bank will contemplate cutting rates before the end of 2023.

To be clear, no one knows exactly when policymakers will take that step, but most believe it will be sometime late this year. Since March 2022, the Fed has increased the benchmark overnight interest rate by a total of 525 basis points.

Since July, the Fed’s policy rate has been 5.25% or 5.50%.

In a report published on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that domestic instability in emerging economies of the G20 is having an ever-growing impact on the growth prospects of richer countries.

The emerging markets, ranging from the world’s second biggest economy, China, to serial defaulter Argentina, have become increasingly pivotal to global growth through trade and commodity value chains.

Now they are acting as both targets and sources of global economic shocks.

The finding – an important component of the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook report released ahead of the IMF World Bank Group Spring Meetings in Washington, DC – is that, since 2000, the transmission of domestic shocks in G20 emerging markets has increased.

It has largely converged with the global average, with the spillovers of Chinese shocks accounting for up to 10% of output variation in other emerging markets and 5% in advanced economies in a three-year sample.

Outside of China, other G20 emerging markets likewise account for up to 4% of each otehr’s output variation.

As the report notes, the global economy is ‘deeply interconnected’: the report cites both the risk to wealthy nations from negative events that occur elsewhere in the world and the prospect of economic growth in those emerging markets benefitting wealthier nations.

The combined GDP share of the 10 emerging economies inside the G20 – Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey – has more than doubled since 2000.

International economic spillovers, especially those led by China, have roughly tripled since the early 2000s, and Brazil, India and Mexico have also seen a modest increase in the importance of their contributions to the global economic dynamic.

The Chinese economy, meanwhile, appears to be under pressure, in part from slowing real estate investment, high local government debt and a government commitment to wean the economy off credit.