New Week Kicks Off with Record High Gold Price But More than a 2% Drop in Bitcoin

September 22, 2025

(173) The fourth week of September got off to a slow week from a data release standpoint. Investor attention is particularly focused on the policy stances of major central banks, which seem to be leaning in divergent directions. The Federal Reserve’s latest dot-plot diagram points to 25-basis point interest rate cuts at the remaining two scheduled policy reviews in 2025, but newly installed Governor Miran feels confident that he can convert other governors to a more aggressive path of decline. The European Central Bank’s Governing Council, in contrast, seems comfortable with its current stance and in no hurry to end the pause. Bank of Japan watchers are in Godot mode, as officials of that institution keep dangling the prospect of more rate increases just as soon as they see a little more data to confirm that their inflation target will be sustainable.

A parade of officials from the Federal Reserve and other monetary authorities are scheduled to make public remarks this week. Today’s menu includes Williams, Musalem, Barkin and Hammack from the Fed, Bailey and Pill from the Bank of England, and Nagel and Lane from the European Central Bank. Governor Bullock of the Reserve Bank of Australia has already spoken of a landscape of considerable uncertainty that requires policy flexibility to adjust to any changes in risk assessments dictated by evolving data.

In overnight financial market action, the dollar reverted to an orderly and moderately slowed downward trend, relinquishing 0.2% of value against the euro, Swiss franc and sterling, 0.4% relative to the Korean won but no lost ground versus the Japanese yen. Ten-year sovereign debt yields have declined two basis points in the U.K. and a basis point in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield is unchanged, and its Japanese counterpart ticked a basis point higher. Equities rose 1.0% in Japan, which will be closed tomorrow for the Autumnal Equinox holiday, 1.2% in Taiwan and by 0.7% in South Korea. But losses today were booked of 0.8% in Hong Kong, 0.7% in New Zealand and 0.6% in India. The German Dax is so far down 0.6%, but the British FTSE has ticked up 0.1%. In pre-open U.S. trading, the SPX, DOW, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 each show losses ranging form 0.2% to 0.4%. The price of oil is down, too.

As in June, July, and August, China’s 1-year and 5-year Loan Prime Rates were left unchanged at 3.0% and 3.5% at September’s monthly fixing.

Consumer price inflation in Hong Kong edged up to a 2-month high of 1.1% in August from July’s 49-month low of 1.0%.

Lebanese CPI inflation, which had previously decelerated from a peak of 268.8% in April 2023 to as low as 13.0% this past April, slowed to its lowest on-year rate (14.2%) since that trough.

Consumer price inflation in Morocco of merely 0.3% last month represented a 15-month low and was well below the high of 10.1% in February 2023.

Irish wholesale price inflation of -3.0% last month has been below zero percent since February. Estonian producer price inflation was also negative in August at -1.6% but less severely so than July’s -2.2%, which was the most deflationary in 15 months.

This week’s most eagerly awaited price data release doesn’t occur until Friday, when the U.S. Commerce Dept.’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reports on personal income, personal spending and the PCE price deflator in August, which happens to be the Federal Reserve’s favorite among many price measurements used to guide its interest rate decisions. The 12-month pace of the PCE deflator in July was 2.6% overall (same as in June) and a 5-month high of 2.9% excluding food and energy.

Consumer sentiment indices in several economies were reported today. including a 15-month high in Belgium, a 30-month low in Denmark, a 2-month low in Turkey, and a third straight reading in the Netherlands of -32, which constitute the least degree of pessimism since February.

Tags: People’s Bank of China loan prime rate, RBA Governor Bullock

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on Monday, September 22nd, 2025 at 5:52 am and is filed under New Overnight Developments Abroad – Daily Update.
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