Yellow metal, which usually rises in times of uncertainty, rose about 0.8% to $ 1,989 an ounce, reaching its highest level in more than a month. US stocks fell on Monday, with the S&P 500 blue-chip down 0.3% in afternoon trading, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.6% in lower trading as markets reopened over the weekend. Shares in the S&P 500 were about 20% below recent averages, according to data from Bloomberg. An broad MSCI index of stock markets in the Asia-Pacific region fell 1.1% on its second consecutive day of decline. The big European markets remained closed due to the Easter Monday holiday. In government bond markets, the yield on the 10-year bond gained 0.06 percentage points to 2.87%. Yields are reversed in terms of price. The cautious start to trading week followed China’s announcement of a financial turmoil. Gross Domestic Product rose 4.8 percent in the first three months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, exceeding market expectations. However, economic data for March revealed how Beijing’s zero-Covid policy, including the lockdown in Shanghai, has eroded the growth prospects of the world’s second-largest economy. Retail sales fell 3.5 percent in March from the same month in 2021, the first year-on-year decline since July 2020. The annual growth rate of industrial production slowed. and the indicators monitoring China’s troubled real estate market deteriorated further. “While the March data show a significant slowdown in dynamic growth, with the Covid zero policy escalating and the widening of the economic downturn, the economic downturn is likely to be higher in April compared to March,” the analysts said. of JPMorgan. JPMorgan cut its forecast for China’s GDP growth in 2022 from 4.9 percent to 4.6 percent. Barclays also cut its growth forecast for 2022 from 4.5 percent to 4.3 percent. The latest outburst of concern for China has heightened investor concern over plans by the world’s central banks to tighten monetary policy in a bid to curb rampant inflation. Indeed, U.S. gas prices rose 10 percent to $ 8.03 a metric British thermal unit on Monday – the highest level since 2008. Investors will be watching closely from speeches by Federal Reserve officials, including President Jay Powell, this week that could provide further guidance on how aggressively policymakers will raise interest rates this year.

Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, said at the weekend that the central bank was facing a “difficult path to a gentle landing” as it tried to push inflation at the 2% target from 8.5% sharply. boosting borrowing costs and reducing its $ 9 trillion balance sheet size. Hajius sees a 15 percent chance the U.S. will fall into recession next year and a 35 percent chance it will in the next 24 months. Investors also assimilated the latest batch of corporate results. Bank of America showed better-than-expected earnings on Monday, driven by a recovery in lending and higher interest rates. The first quarter earnings season in the US started on a decent basis, with the S&P 500 companies so far reporting earnings 7.5% higher than expected, according to FactSet. However, less than a tenth of the blue-chip companies have updated the market so far and investors will have a better picture of the overall outlook by the end of this week, when another 67 items including Netflix, IBM and American Express will have reported results.