(Reuters) - Following are five big themes likely to dominate the thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them.
GONE TO THE DOGS
Investors burnt in the 2018 stock market rout will be happy to put the Year of the Dog behind them. Instead, the end of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday will usher in the Year of the Pig, a symbol of wealth and prosperity.
The first month of the Gregorian calendar may augur well, too. The $4 trillion MSCI world stocks index just enjoyed the best start to a year since the benchmark began in 1988. The question is: Can the Pig help global equities sustain this stellar run?
Some bargain hunting and short-covering were to be expected after December’s historic rout. Hopes that the trade spat between Washington and Beijing may ease and signs of a pause in U.S. interest rate hikes also helped. But a major issue behind the selloff - China’s cooling economy - has not gone away.
What’s more, investors obsessing over whether the global economy is sliding towards recession are heading into February starved of crucial macroeconomic data that would normally guide them.
China will be shut for a week for the Spring Festival. That may drain global financial markets of some liquidity. On the data front, Beijing tends to combine some industrial activity data for the first two months to prevent a skew in the numbers.
In the United States, the 35-day government shutdown that ended a week ago has complicated the release and
