On Thursday morning (May 15th), the Asian market held its breath as it awaited the release of the US retail sales data for April (commonly known as the “terror data”) at 20:30. The current market expectation is that the monthly data rate will only increase by 0.3%, but several economists warn that due to the impact of tariff policies, declining consumer confidence, and inflation stickiness, the actual data may fall short of expectations, leading to severe fluctuations in the financial market.

On Thursday (May 9th), US President Trump once again criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Powell on social media, calling him “foolish and incompetent” and accusing the Fed of being “slow to act” and failing to cut interest rates in a timely manner to cope with the downward pressure on the economy. At the same time, the trade agreement framework reached between the United States and the United Kingdom on May 8th sent a signal of easing global trade frictions, with the US dollar index jumping 1.03% to 100.639 on the same day, reaching a new high in nearly a month, further suppressing market expectations of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates.

On April 30th local time, the Trump administration’s attitude towards the Russia Ukraine peace talks took a sharp turn for the worse. White House envoy Kellogg bluntly stated in an interview that Russia’s proposal for a “three-day ceasefire” is “extremely absurd” and that the United States is seeking a “comprehensive and permanent ceasefire”. This statement echoes Trump’s previous tough stance – on April 23, he publicly criticized Ukrainian President Zelensky for “obstructing the peace process” and threatened that “if negotiations fail, the United States will completely withdraw”.

The non farm payroll data released by the United States in May will be released at 20:30 Beijing time on May 2, with market focus on whether the labor market continues to slow down. In March, 228000 new non farm jobs were added, far exceeding the expected 135000. The unemployment rate slightly increased to 4.2%, but the salary growth rate slowed down to 0.3% month on month. This data indicates that the labor market remains resilient, but the easing of wage pressures may provide space for the Federal Reserve’s policy shift.

On April 25th, senior officials of the Federal Reserve made intensive statements, clearly stating that there is no need to adjust monetary policy at present, and the interest rate remains unchanged in the range of 4.25% -4.5%. Behind this’ pause button ‘is the dual pressure of the’ stagflation ‘risk caused by the Trump administration’s tariff policies and the crisis of the Federal Reserve’s independence. Despite the market’s increasing expectations of interest rate cuts, Powell faces a difficult balance between “controlling inflation” and “stabilizing growth”, making it difficult to release signals of easing in the short term. Affected by this, the gold market has shown a roller coaster trend, with intraday fluctuations exceeding $20.