Indices from Asia-Pacific rallied today, reacting to stellar Wall Street session on Friday. Nikkei jumped 1.5%, S&P/ASX 200 moved 2% higher and Kospi gained 1.8%. Indices from China traded 0.8-2.5% higher

DAX futures point to a higher opening of the European cash session today

G7 countries will ban imports of Russian gold. A price cap on Russian oil is also being discussed during the ongoing G7 meeting

According to the IMF, the US economy will expand 2.9% this year, down from a previous forecast of 3.7%. IMF said that path for the US to avoid recession is narrowing

Wang  Yiming, adviser to People’s Bank of China, said that Chinese GDP will grow 4.7% this year, short of an official target of 5.5%

According to BiS, a period of below-trend growth will be needed to bring inflation back to acceptable levels

Bloomberg says that Russia defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in over 100 years as the country failed to make a payment on the bond that had its grace period end yesterday

Oil prices bounced after Ecuador’s energy minister said that oil output in the country may be halted completely within the next two days if protests continue. President of Ecuador announced that gasoline prices, a cause for protests, will be lowered. However, gains on the oil market were erased by now

Profits of Chinese industrial firms were 6.5% YoY lower in May

Cryptocurrencies are trading slightly lower at the beginning of a new week. Bitcoin drops 0.8% but still manages to remain above $21,000

Precious metals benefit from a weaker US dollar and trade higher. Palladium is a top performer (+4.4%), followed by silver (+1.3%)

JPY and GBP are the best performing major currencies while AUD and USD lag the most

Brent (OIL) attempted to break above the resistance zone marked with 61.8% retracement following news of a potential complete halt to Ecuadorian oil output. However, grim forecasts from IMF, PBoC and BiS triggered a pullback and all of the gains were erased