
Weekly digest: UK Slams Crypto, Recession Alert

30/06/21: Analysts predict a bullish week for gold, UK’s financial regulator bans the world’s largest crypto exchange from doing business in the country. And more.
Investment news
Gold ended last week up around 1% after dropping sharply on the Fed’s hawkish rate increase announcement in the previous week.
Ahead of the new week, the S&P 500 was up nearly 14% this year; the Dow was up 12.5% year to date; and the Nasdaq was up 11.4% in 2021.
“I definitely think we can see something north of $70,000 by the end of the year. I think that we can expect all that FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt] that we’ve seen in recent weeks to kind of cause a flat trend in the market through the summer,” Jason Urban, co-head of Galaxy Digital Trading at Galaxy Digital, said.
Binance, however, said the notice would have no "direct impact" on the services it provides from its website Binance.com since its existing crypto exchange is not UK-based. Despite the FCA ruling, there will be no impact on UK residents who use the website to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
Binance.com is one of the world’s largest online exchange platform offering a range of financial services, including purchasing and trading a wide range of cryptocurrencies.
Facebook is the fifth U.S. company to reach the milestone, joining Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google-parent company Alphabet.
What else is happening
“I will say that these effects have been larger than we expected, and they may turn out to be more persistent than we have expected. But the incoming data are very consistent with the view that these are factors that will wane over time, and inflation will then move down toward our goals and we’ll be monitoring that carefully,” Powell said.
*Read our SPOTLIGHT article on Sam Zell.
“Every day I see evidence of inflation not being transitory, and I have concern that the Fed is falling behind and that it may have to play catch-up, and history makes you very uncomfortable if you end up in a world in which the Fed has to play catch-up,” Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, told CNBC.
And if the Fed fails to do that, it may have to increase interest rates and tighten its monetary policy faster than it would like.
“Normally, we end up with a recession because you have to slam on the brakes as opposed to slowly taking your foot off the accelerator, which is what I believe is going to happen,” El-Erian added.
“The criteria is that we have a sustainable inflation rate, that’s 2% or above, and that we’re at full employment,” Rosengren said in a broadcast interview with Yahoo Finance. “I do expect that it’s quite possible that we will see that by the end of next year, but it does depend on whether the economy progresses as strongly as I’m expecting,” Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said.
Data shows half of the 64.3 million people who applied for unemployment assistance did not get any money under that program.
And finally…
“After much observation of super-wealthy families, here’s my recommendation: Leave the children enough so that they can do anything, but not enough that they can do nothing,” Buffett said in a note to shareholders.
But don’t get fooled. It’s not exactly like Buffett’s kids, now in their 60s, haven’t got anything from their dad. Each child reportedly has a $2 billion foundation funded by Warren.
See you next week!