Updated Feb 23, 2012 5:00:00 AM By Kathleen Brooks
The big news of the session is EURUSD punching through the 1.33 resistance level that had thwarted the bulls for most of this week. The trigger to the move higher in the single currency was plain old fundamentals. The German IFO for February, which measures business sentiment in the manufacturing, retailing and construction sectors, rose to its highest level since summer 2011, before the downturn triggered by the escalation in the sovereign debt crisis. [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 23, 2012 12:44:24 AM By Chrsi Tedder
Australia’s PM Gillard has called a leadership ballot for the Labor Party, to be held at 10am on Monday. The PM stated the time has come for the party to resolve the current dispute between herself and former PM Rudd, who resigned on Wednesday as foreign minister. Rudd has not yet declared whether he will stand but we expect him to announce his candidacy when he returns from a visit to the US tomorrow. [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 11:40:00 PM By Daniel Hwang
Midway through Thursday Asia market hours, price action has been decent but direction nonexistent. With no top tier data releases on tap, markets reacted to Australia PM Gillard’s call for a leadership ballot setting the stage for a political throw-down with former Foreign Minister Rudd on Feb. 27th. Although Gillard’s announcement was largely expected, Australasian currencies (AUD, NZD) were immediately offered but met solid demand at key support areas – the 1.0600 barrier in AUD/USD [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 7:33:42 PM By Chris Tedder
In Australia, following the resignation of foreign minister and former PM Rudd, current PM Gillard has called for a leadership ballot at 10am on Monday. She added if she does not succeed then she will move to the back bench and not look to take the top job again. We suspect Rudd will announce his candidacy over the next few days when he gets back from Washington, leading to a showdown early next week. Whilst [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 5:30:00 PM By Chris Tevere, CMT
Last week I asked “did the BoJ change the game?” as they altered their monetary policy stance regarding monetary policy – Increased their asset purchase program by ¥10 trillion to ¥65T total, but more importantly adopted a consumer inflation target of 1%. Accordingly USD/JPY took flight, bottomed just ahead of 76 the figure, broke above long-term trendline resistance drawn from the 2007 high and then took out a key horizontal pivot around 78.30. Sure enough, [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 4:05:00 PM By Eric Viloria, CMT
Risk off continued into NY trading and the USD traded mostly firmer as investors sought safety in the greenback. UST yields were lower across the curve with the 10-year Treasury yields shedding a little over 5bps to the 2.00% level at time of writing and U.S. equities declined marginally on global growth concerns. The DJIA finished the day lower by about -0.21% while the S&P 500 declined around -0.34% to close out the session. PMI’s [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 3:15:00 PM By Brian Dolan
Following approval of Greece’s second bailout package, markets have displayed a certain lack of enthusiasm, which is understandable given the still very severe plight facing Greece in the weeks and months ahead. Beyond the likely failure of Greece to meet deficit targets further down the road due to its deep recession and impending budget cuts, we think there are near-term risks ahead in the implementation of the required reforms, most clearly in the Greek government [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 12:00:00 PM By Kathleen Brooks
The Bank of England minutes from the February meeting were released on Wednesday and surprised the market because two members of the Committee (noted dove Adam Posen and David Miles) had voted to extend asset purchases by GBP75bn, more than the GBP50bn that the consensus wanted. This caused an immediate knee-jerk reaction in the pound, which dropped from 1.58 to below 1.57 vs. the US dollar, while EURGBP punched through resistance at 0.84 and [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 9:30:00 AM By Eric Viloria, CMT
• USD is higher against most of the majors with the exception of the NOK as sentiment declines after contractionary PMI readings in China and Europe. China’s unofficial flash manufacturing PMI improved to 49.7 from the prior 48.8 but signaled continued contraction in the manufacturing sector. Asian stock markets closed slightly higher and European bourses are currently in the red along with U.S. equity futures. The UST yield curve is flatter as 2-yr yields are [...] Continue Reading
Updated Feb 22, 2012 5:00:00 AM By Kathleen Brooks
The focus today is very much on the growth signals coming out of the currency bloc. After all, now that Greece has been “stabilised” post the second bailout deal, if stocks are going to continue to extend gains then they need to see growth signals continue their positive run. That’s where we are becoming a little unstuck. The Eurozone PMI data for February plunged back into contraction territory for February. The composite index fell [...] Continue Reading
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