The volume of retail sales in the euro area in February rose by 0.3% compared to January, according to a press release from the European statistical agency Eurostat. Analysts polled by DailyFX expected growth of 0.6%. Year-over-year retail sales in the euro area rose 5 percent in February. Analysts expected growth of 4.8%. In the European Union retail sales in February increased 0.3% compared...

Insiders at Chinese companies were selling large shares shortly before their prices plummeted, thereby avoiding losses of at least $10 billion over the five years from 2016 to 2021, the researchers found after reviewing Securities and Exchange Commission documents. U.S. researchers analyzed documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 2016 through 2021.  They...

OPEC+ has excluded IEA data from its calculations, replacing it with Wood Mackenzie and Rystad. OPEC+ has excluded data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) from its calculations on the oil deal, replacing them with information from analytical companies Wood Mackenzie and Rystad Energy, according to a report by the alliance's technical committee. "The technical committee has replaced,...

Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) First Deputy Managing Director, suggested that sanctions on Russia adopted in response to the military operation in Ukraine could erode the dollar's dominance. "The dollar would remain the major global currency even in such a situation," Ms. Gopinath told the Financial Times, "but fragmentation at a lesser level is probably plausible." Ms....

According to IMF economists, the impact of transportation cost increases is becoming more pronounced. The IMF studied the movements of the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), which reflects the average price of shipping on twenty key routes and encompasses 100% of the world's bulk cargo shipments, to keep track of transportation costs. Transportation cost fluctuations have inflationary impacts that are...

According to the annual joint research of the Swiss bank UBS and the Art Basel exhibition, the global art market in 2021 will be much higher than in 2020, surpassing the pre-pandemic year of 2019. In 2021, the market volume was $65.1 billion, up 29% from 2020 and $0.7 billion from the previous year. Art Basel and UBS' own estimates of the turnover of several dozen of the world's major galleries,...

Executive Director Leo Power: Canada's LNG project could be accelerated. Leo Power, executive director of LNG Newfoundland and Labrador Limited, told Bloomberg that an LNG project in eastern Canada could be accelerated because of increased demand for gas in Europe. He said the C$5.5 billion project at Grassy Point could be pushed from 2030 to 2028. The shipping terminal would produce up to...

The Governing Council of the Bank of Mexico raised its key rate by 50 basis points for the second time in 2022; now it stands at 6.5 percent, according to a statement on the organization's website. "The Governing Council of the Bank of Mexico has decided to raise its target overnight interbank interest rate by 50 basis points to 6.5 percent effective March 25, 2022," the communiqué reads. The...

Coffee producers have found themselves in the critical situation due to rising fertilizer prices, writes Bloomberg. Farmers are trying to find alternatives to fertilizers, the prices of which are rising worldwide due to supply disruptions, including from Russia and Belarus (both countries are among the world's leading suppliers of fertilizers). As for other inputs needed for agriculture, they,...