1. Important macro news and events:
The monthly rate of retail sales in the United States in March recorded 0.5%, lower than the expected 0.6%, and the previous value was revised up to 0.8% from 0.3%. The monthly rate of US import price index in March recorded 2.6%, the highest since April 2011. In addition, the initial value of the University of Michigan consumer confidence index in April was 65.7, much higher than the expected 59.
New York Fed chairman Williams said his baseline assumption was that the neutral interest rate was still in the low range of 2-2.5%. The speed of raising interest rates depends on the economic trend, but raising interest rates by 50 basis points at the next meeting is a reasonable choice. In terms of table reduction, if the Fed makes a decision in May, it will start this work in June.
The European Central Bank announced the interest rate resolution and kept the three key interest rates unchanged; Confirm that the net purchase of the asset purchase plan will end in the third quarter. After the net bond purchase, the interest rate will rise "for a period of time", and any interest rate increase will be gradual. Lagarde said the interval between ending the asset purchase plan and raising interest rates was "a week to a few months". The euro once fell below 1.08. A source said that ECB policymakers believe that it is still possible to raise interest rates in July after Thursday's meeting; The European Central Bank expects a growing consensus on raising interest rates by 25 basis points in the third quarter. The euro recovered some of its losses, but still fell 0.52% on Thursday.
Liu Kun wrote that in order to help market players alleviate the current production and operation difficulties and respond to the expectations and needs of market players, we will continue to implement more large-scale combined tax cuts and fees this year. The central government has carefully designed the overall plan and specific path, combined phased measures and institutional arrangements, and carried out both tax rebate and tax reduction to provide strong support for stabilizing the macro-economic market. It is expected that the annual tax rebate and tax reduction will be about 2.5 trillion yuan.
Sun Guofeng, director of the Monetary Policy Department of the people's Bank of China, said that in the next step, monetary policy tools such as RRR reduction will be used in a timely manner to further strengthen financial support for the real economy, especially industries seriously affected by the epidemic, small, medium-sized and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households, make reasonable profits to the real economy and reduce comprehensive financing costs.
