Market sentiment is mixed, as investors don’t know what to do with the latest economic data and their Federal Reserve (Fed) expectations these days. Released yesterday, the US retail sales data surprised with an unexpected 0.7% rise in August versus a 0.8% decline penciled in. Stronger than expected data seemed to have fueled Fed tapering expectations rather than the bulls’ appetite.

Strong sales boosted US retailers’ stock prices.

Ford gained, as well, on high demand for its F-150 truck, while Palantir jumped 6% on successfully teaming up with Wejo.

AMC Entertainment couldn’t convince investors that accepting cryptocurrencies would add value to its business in the future.

Cryptocurrencies remain on track for further gains this weekend, as Bitcoin should be further backed by a recent golden cross formation.

Economic data is mixed, but the market mood is better.

S&P500 rebounds from its 50-dma, as Chinese stocks remain under a heavy selling pressure on latest news that the casino stocks will be subject to stricter regulations in Macau.

Nio is one Chinese stock that resists the broad selloff on Chinese stocks, as Tesla is poised to extend gains on improving risk appetite. However, the overall mood in other electric carmakers is not brilliant.

Oil hits $73pb on decent decline in weekly US crude inventories, and energy stocks rally.

Gold, on the other hand, remains offered near the $1800 per oz.

Apple reveals the new products, but shares continue falling as the overall market mood is getting uglier on the back of high inflation, though the August figure showed steadying in August at the market consensus.

US crude continues pushing higher on 5-million-barrel decline revealed by the API data on US crude inventories last week.

Elsewhere, Roger Federer’s On Running is going public today and the company could reach a valuation as high as $7.3 billion. Should you rush in?

Market mood is stable before the US inflation data, but a strong read could further hammer the risk appetite today.

US crude breaks above the two-month downtrending channel top as aluminum futures rise in an exponential trend, hinting that the inflation may not be ready to ease just yet.

On individual company front, Intel gained more than 2% on news that the company will lower its price to fight back competition. Intel’s latest collaboration with Nio to launch robotaxis in Europe may also give a boost to the share price, but Intel is not the only one rushing to the self-driving taxi market.

Finally, Litecoin spikes on fake news that Walmart would accept LTC payments while other cryptocurrency prices consolidate.

Week starts on a negative mood as Friday’s producer prices in the US revealed a faster than expected rise in producer prices ahead of US and UK CPI due Tuesday and Wednesday.

VIX jumped, gold was mostly unreactive.

Apple fell 3.30% on a court order to accept alternative payment methods on App store as a result of a yearlong fight against Epic Games. Online game stocks gained.

Alibaba shares tanked in Honk Kong as government now wants Ant’s loan business separated from Alipay.

The European Central Bank (ECB) announced to start slowing down PEPP purchases, as President Christine Lagarde insisted that this is not tapering.

The US producer price data, due today, is expected to reveal a further acceleration in factory-gate prices, which could fuel the Federal Reserve (Fed) tapering expectations and weigh on the market mood as the covid news get uglier by the day.

And China is now selling strategic oil reserves to lower energy prices to temper inflation.

Elsewhere, the Chinese tech stocks could be recovering some of losses recorded on the latest news that the government would pause online game approvals.

And finally, Cardano will be launching start contracts on September 12.

Major US indices were offered on Wednesday, as Nasdaq recorded its biggest drop in two weeks. But Nasdaq is consolidating above its one-year positive trend top, as FAANG stocks give no sign of stress for now.

Activity in European and US futures hint that we may not see the mood improving before today’s ECB verdict and Friday’s US producer price data.

The major risk is that there are many leveraged positions in the market right now, and even a fall as small as 2% could trigger forced liquidations and amplify a downside correction.

Now it’s Europe’s turn to find out more about what’s cooking in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) kitchen. The European Central Bank is expected to maintain its rates unchanged at today’s meeting, and at many more meetings to come, but they are expected to start talking about tapering their bond purchases.

The DAX shed some 1.50% yesterday and the CAC40 was down by 0.85% ahead of today’s ECB meeting as some investors are now fearing the vindictive return from the ECB hawks!

Bitcoin dived 18% on bumpy El Salvador adoption, but critical technical levels remains intact for the continuation of the positive trend building since July.

Ethereum and Cardano declined, but Solana resisted better to the selloff.

Elsewhere, Coinbase lost 4% as SEC warned the company that they should not launch a product offering interest on cryptocurrency holdings.

Elsewhere, the tech stocks did better as the stock prices continued being led by the prospects of low post-pandemic rates rather than a strong reflation environment.

Friday’s US jobs data was a big miss, with only 235K new nonfarm jobs added in the month of August versus more than 700K penciled in by analysts. But bad news was mostly interpreted as good by the global equity markets, as the soft data revived the expectations of a delay in Federal Reserve (Fed) QE tapering. As such, Asian and European stock markets kicked off the week on a positive note.

Oil is under a decent selling pressure on news that the Saudis cut their October selling price to Asians by at least a per barrel on all grades.

And ‘buy $30 Bitcoin’ is the major topic on crypto discussions in social media. Talks of a collective pump pushed the price of a Bitcoin to almost $53K, the highest level since May. But so far, what we have seen in terms of price action is far from a successful collective move, as the one we saw in GameStop shares. What to expect?

Friday’s US jobs data was mixed. The big miss on NFP data fueled expectations that the Federal Reserve (Fed) should delay the QE taper, but the rising wages revived inflation worries and the idea that the Fed taper could not be delayed by too much, either.

Nasdaq eked out small gains, commodities gained.

This week, the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank of Canada and the European Central Bank (ECB) will announce their latest monetary policy decision. There are increadingly rising hawkish expectations on the ECB front, which pressures the EURUSD higher.

On the corporate agenda, GameStop and FuelCell earnings are due this week.