· Yen pressured as vaccine hopes boost risk appetite
The yen scraped back some losses against the U.S. dollar on Tuesday, after the safe currency took a drubbing on news of the development of a coronavirus vaccine which raised optimism of a global economic recovery.
The yen edged higher to 105.07 against the dollar, after suffering its biggest loss overnight since March. It fetched 76.42 against the Australian dollar, having lost more than 2% overnight.
The euro stood little changed at 1.1819, having fallen more than 0.4% overnight.
The prospects of a Biden presidency has boosted risk sentiment as many believe it could boost international trade relations and maintain an easy monetary policy.
Against a basket of currencies, the dollar held steady at 92.75, slightly above Monday’s 10-week trough of 92.12.
· A Covid vaccine could mean a slowdown in growth for grocers that benefited from shuttered restaurants, report says
· Pfizer, BioNTech initial vaccine results impress, but scientists remain cautious
Scientists on Monday said initial trial results for Pfizer Inc and BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine far outpaced their expectations for protection against a completely new disease, but that many questions remain unanswered.
The drugmakers said their vaccine was more than 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19, based on data from the first 94 people in the trial to become infected with the coronavirus.
Dr. William Gruber, Pfizer’s senior vice president of vaccine clinical research and development, said in an interview the companies changed the study plan after discussions with U.S. regulators and ultimately ended up with data on 94 people.
“It gives you more power and more confidence,” said John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. “When you triple the numbers and you get a large difference between them, it’s much more likely to be real.”
Others cautioned that many questions remain, including whether the vaccine can prevent severe disease or complications, how long it will protect against infection and how well it will work in the elderly.
They noted that required safety data will not be available until later this month. In addition, Pfizer and BioNTech have yet to submit their data for peer review by other scientists, a key step in determining the quality of the results.
· Biden says vaccine approval process must be guided by science
President-elect Joe Biden on Monday said a coronavirus vaccine approval process must be guided by science so the public can have confidence it is safe and effective, warning that the United States is still facing a very dark winter and that a vaccine likely won’t be available for months.
· FDA clears Eli Lilly drug for emergency use; America tops 10 million cases
· Spain to get first Pfizer vaccines in early 2021, Health Minister says
The country would initially get 20 million vaccine doses, enough to immunize 10 million people, Illa said in an interview with state broadcaster TVE.
· U.S. renewable fuels legislation could garner bipartisan support under Biden
· Biden camp considers legal action over agency's delay in recognizing transition
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is considering legal action over a federal agency’s delay in recognizing the Democrat’s victory over President Donald Trump in last week’s election, a Biden official said on Monday.
· Biden administration might see eye-to-eye withChina on two things, says former IMF China head
The U.S. under a Biden administration could cooperate with China on health care and climate change, even as the two countries remain far apart on other issues, said Eswar Prasad, a former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.
“So these are areas where I think the two countries might see eye-to-eye, which I hope would provide a better basis for negotiation on much more difficult areas, especially economic and trade policies where there are contentious issues almost built in,” said Prasad.
That doesn’t mean that relations between the U.S. and China — which worsened under President Donald Trump — could take a turn for the better. Echoing the views of many experts, Prasad said the U.S. policy toward China is unlikely to change substantially.
Still, the Biden administration would use a different tone and tactic in approaching Beijing, said the professor. The president-elect is likely to staff his administration with people who worked under former President Barack Obama, Prasad said. Those people, he added, recognize that there may be benefits to working with China.
· Biden will likely continue to champion strong ties with India
Strengthening U.S. relations with India will likely remain a focus for the Biden administration, experts told CNBC.
U.S.-India ties under Trump
Under the Trump administration, the India-U.S. relationship has had a mixed outcome.
On the trade front, tensions flared after the U.S. last year removed India from a long-running program that allowed the South Asian country to export many of its goods to the U.S. without tariffs. In response, India levied retaliatory tariffs on selected U.S. products.
But on the military front, U.S.-India ties have strengthened in light of rising tensions between India and China. Last month, the U.S. and India inked a major defense deal that Washington typically signs with close allies, that will allow New Delhi to access U.S. satellite data crucial for targeting missiles and other military assets.
President-elect Biden “has long championed strong US-India ties,” Harsh Pant, head of the strategic studies program at Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, told CNBC.
The Indian government was “a bit hesitant” during the Obama administration about fostering closer ties with the U.S., according to Pant. Today, things are different: There is “great receptivity” in New Delhi that a strong U.S.-India relationship is important for the South Asian country’s “global ambitions as well as managing China breathing down its neck in the Himalayas,” Pant said.
· China's central bank injects liquidity into market via reverse repos
China's central bank pumped cash into the banking system through open market operations to maintain liquidity Tuesday.
The People's Bank of China injected 120 billion yuan (about 18.21 billion U.S. dollars) into the market through seven-day reverse repos at an interest rate of 2.2 percent, according to a statement on its website.
· China's inflation fails to perk up, defies broader recovery
China’s factory-gate prices fell at a sharper-than-expected pace in October, weighed by soft demand for fuel even as the trade and manufacturing sectors staged impressive recoveries from their COVID-19 slump.
Consumer inflation was also soft, easing to an 11-year low as pork prices snapped a year-and-a-half of steep increases that was fuelled by critical shortages of the popular meat.
While the weaker price gauges largely reflect swings in volatile items, they also show upstream demand for industrial goods remains tepid overall in the world’s second-largest economy, despite signs of modest improvement in recent months.
The producer price index (PPI) fell 2.1% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Tuesday, the same pace as in September and slightly more than a 2.0% decline tipped by the median forecast from a Reuters survey of analysts.
· 40 million new internet users in 2020, the report reports
Southeast Asia saw an increase in the use of digital services such as e-commerce, grocery delivery and online payment due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from Google, Temasek Holdings and Bain & Company.
Up to 40 million people in six countries in the region – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand – went online for the first time in 2020, the report said. This brought the total number of Internet users in Southeast Asia to 400 million. It added that many of the new users were from non-urban areas in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
· Oil falls as renewed lockdowns counter COVID-19 vaccine hopes
Oil prices fell on Tuesday as worries over near term fuel demand in coronavirus-hit Europe and the United States haunted the market after an overnight surge driven by encouraging news on a COVID-19 vaccine.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 55 cents, or almost 1.4%, to $39.74 a barrel by 0545 GMT, while Brent crude futures fell 44 cents, or 1%, to $41.96.
Both benchmark contracts jumped 8% on Monday, in their biggest daily gains in more than five months, after drugmakers Pfizer PFE.N and BioNTech 22UAy.F said an experimental COVID-19 treatment was more than90% effective based on initial trial results. Mass rollouts, however, are likely months away and subject to regulatory approvals.
Reference: Reuters, CNBC
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