- Dollar retraces yesterday’s gains so far today
- Fed rate hike in the balance as we gear towards the key risk events this week
- Eurozone April Sentix investor confidence -8.7 vs -9.9 expected
- Eurozone February retail sales -0.8% vs -0.8% m/m expected
- US March NFIB small business optimism index 90.1 vs 90.9 prior
- SNB total sight deposits w.e. 7 April CHF 532.2 bn vs CHF 563.6 bn prior
- China March M2 money supply +12.7% vs +12.7% y/y expected
Markets:
- CHF leads, NZD lags on the day
- European equities slightly higher; S&P 500 futures flat
- US 10-year yields down 0.4 bps to 3.411%
- Gold up 0.5% to $2,000.28
- WTI crude down 0.3% to $79.51
- Bitcoin up 3.2% to $30,090
It was a largely quiet session as European traders returned from the Easter break, only to gain a sense of trepidation ahead of key US data to come later in the week.
Equities opened with some decent optimism but has seen gains slowly pared back, with US futures also little changed now. Meanwhile, European bond yields are holding higher in trying to play catch up to Treasury yields – which jumped after the US jobs report on Friday. The latter is not really doing much today after having held lower earlier in the session.
In FX, the dollar retraced its post-NFP gains with EUR/USD climbing back above 1.0900 and GBP/USD also pushing back above 1.2400 during the session. USD/JPY is down slightly by 0.3% to 133.25 but off the lows close to 133.00 from earlier in the day.
Meanwhile, commodity currencies were more mixed with USD/CAD flattish around 1.3500 and NZD/USD down slightly by 0.1% to 0.6210 as the kiwi continues to struggle somewhat since the drop last Thursday.
Elsewhere, gold is hugging the $2,000 mark again as traders continue to contemplate the rates and dollar outlook. Then, we have Bitcoin rising back above the $30,000 mark for the first time since June last year.
This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.