Market Information Friday 20 August 2021

In the United States, the number of initial jobless claims has reached its lowest point since the outbreak of the corona crisis in March of last year. In the week of March 14, 2020, there were 256,000 applications, this rose a week later to 2,923,000 and the following week to 5,985,000. Last week there were 348,000 applications.

Recent figures from Statistics Netherlands show that 3.1% of the Dutch labor force, 289,000 people, were unemployed in July 2021. Since April this year, the number of unemployed has been falling by an average of 9,000 per month. Youth unemployment in particular is declining sharply. In July it was 7.3%, the lowest rate since March 2020. The hospitality and catering sector also recorded strong declines, with the number of current welfare recipients falling by 16.1% last month.

The U.S. Leading Economic Indicators index rose 0.9% in July to 116 (using July 2016 as the baseline). The index is designed to predict the business cycle by calculating a weighted average of 10 leading indicators, such as stock prices, building permits and initial jobless claims.The developers of the index, ‘The Conference Board’, expect a real US GDP growth of 6.0% this year based on these figures.

The 6M Euribor is unchanged at -0.53% compared to previous business day. The 10Y Swap decreased with 1 basis point to -0.11% compared to previous business day.

In the attachment, today’s market data on money and capital market rates as well as other rates are presented.