Our comments and expectations
External Background: The S&P 500 surged by 1.6%, making a successful bounce off its 50-day moving average. The central event yesterday was the Federal Reserve's meeting. As expected, the base rate was held at 5.25-5.5%. More interesting was the subsequent press conference—Powell stated that the option of lowering rates would definitely be discussed at the regulator's September meeting. However, the chairman also provided more cautious remarks, including that the Fed would not reduce rates until it was confident that inflation was moving toward 2%, and that while consumer price dynamics are making progress, they remain high. Investors have become accustomed to such comments, which serve as a restraint against excessive positive influence from other statements. Overall, professional market participants assessed Powell's speech as dovish, and his sentiment as ready for rate cuts. Meanwhile, swap traders continue to fully price in a quarter-point cut in September and an overall reduction of nearly 70 basis points over the year. The technology sector led the way, with the Nasdaq rising by 3% and Nvidia jumping by 12.8%. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 increased by 0.8% and moved above its 50-day moving average. The FTSE 100 rose by 1.13%. In the Asian markets this morning, the picture is less optimistic—the Korean Kospi is up by 0.5%, Hong Kong is neutral, and Japanese indices are down by 2-3% amid rising rates to their highest levels since 2008. Oil rebounded from its trendline and rose to levels above $81 per barrel. Other commodity prices were also in the positive.
Bonds: The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds dropped to 4.11%, and corporate bonds saw decent growth.
KASE Index: The KASE index closed unchanged yesterday. From a technical perspective, there were no particularly noteworthy events in the market, except for activity in some stocks that caused trading volumes in the index to rise to 773 million tenge.
Index Stocks: The biggest gain yesterday was in Air Astana shares, which ended a two-day decline. We are still awaiting the publication of the first half report on August 5. BCK rose by 0.8%, with its volumes jumping to 200 million tenge, but the stock remains in a sideways trend. Trading volumes also increased significantly for Kaztransoil shares, resulting in volatility during the trading day. At their peak, prices reached 830 tenge per share, nearly 2% above the closing price. Among the GDRs, most stocks closed with slight gains. However, the charts for the National Bank and Kazatomprom indicate that the close was below intraday highs, which can be interpreted as unrealized intraday potential. Additionally, uranium rose by 2.25% yesterday, while uranium ETFs URA and URNM increased by 3.8% each.
Currency: The dollar is trading at 474.9 tenge this morning, which does not significantly change the USDKZT outlook. The National Bank reported that in August it will sell $500-600 million for transfers, $230-250 million for purchasing Kazatomprom shares, and will buy $200-250 million for the ECPF. Thus, net sales will amount to $530-600 million USD. For comparison, last month's sales totaled $346 million.