To look out for this week

 Mini update:

This week (week of 29th January 2023) we will see a lot of action in the markets mainly because of 2 main factors - central bank announcements and company earnings.

Central banks from the most powerful economies - Federal Reserve, ECB, and BOJ - are expected to announce rate hikes this week. Current rates are at 4.50%, 2.50% and 0.5%. 

ECB - expected to hike rates by 50bp in both February and March this year to curb inflation. With the 9.2% inflation in December and improving PMI report in the Eurozone, I think the ECB might have to further raise rates more than the anticipated 25bp in the second quarter of this year if this continues. 

BOJ - With Japan's yen falling over the last year, prices have increased substantially, causing a 41-year high inflation of 4%. BOJ has recently started to loosen its yield curve control policy from 0% to 0.5%, but analysts expect the rates to increase further.

Earnings season - Q4 earnings are coming. This week alone, there are 109 companies within S&P500 that will be releasing their reports, including megacap firms like Apple, Amazon and parent company of Google, Alphabet. 

I believe we will see a lot of movement in the markets this week, but with the earnings reports coming out, I think we will get some direction for the coming year in terms of whether inflation and rate hikes are set to continue, demand within the economy, and perhaps nonfarm payrolls further down the line. Nonfarm for January will be out on Friday.