Stepping back

There has been little to dislodge the growing conviction in financial markets about soft landing scenarios over the past few days as data calendars have been thin and policymakers have been relatively quiet. Investors have, therefore, taken their cue from the dataflow that’s been released over the past month suggesting that inflationary pressures are cooling and that further interest rate hikes could now be unnecessary. In our charts this week we home in on:

·         Markets and data surprises

·         US companies’ pricing power

·         Economic uncertainty

·         Global technological adoption

·         Africa’s demographic promise

·         Regional CO2 emissions