Ed Moya, Senior Market Analyst at OANDA, joins us to understand the strong wave of optimism that the Ukraine tensions and talks are proceeding in a constructive manner, and how that is impacting the markets. We are seeing the commodities across the board from oil and natural gas, to gold, palladium, and other base metals continue the correction that started the end of last week on this news, and this brings up the discussion of how supply chains and trading national trading partnerships may change as a result of these recent geopolitical events.

Next we shifted over to the health of the economy with the consumers living off savings and even starting to buy on credit, and still faced with very high inflation in most prices for goods and services.  We reviewed that if businesses can pass their higher input costs and rising wages for staff on to consumers then this may hit their future earnings results, further impacting calls for slowing growth.  Things then shift over to a talk about the upcoming Fed rate hikes slated to start this week, and about how many hikes they guide for the balance of the year, and whether or not this is all going to have much impact on record high levels of inflation, or even if they can normalize interest rates.

Ed feels that in this volatile environment of rising rates, that the financial sector will still benefit, and that the consumer staples sector may be the defensive area of the market that many investors rotate into to ride out the remaining choppiness.

Click here to follow along with Ed’s daily note over at OANDA.