- May Philly Fed -5.8 vs +10.0 exp
- Initial jobless claims 370K vs 365K exp
- Spanish government funds dwindling
- UK’s Osborne making contingencies for euro break-up
- BOE’s Fisher would consider QE in recession
- Bankia: Bank run? What bank run?
- BOJ chatter helps yen
- Tsipras wants to stay in euro
- New Democracy leads in Greek election poll
- Two new Fed governors confirmed
- Fed’s Bullard: US economy doin’ fine
- Moody’s downgrades 4 Spanish regions
- Spain working on regional funding mechanism
- Fitch downgrades Greece
- HP may lay off 25,000 workers
- S&P 500 falls 1.5% to 1305 — a 4-month low
- US 10-years fall below 1.70%
- Gold +35$, oil -28-cents
Relentless bid in the yen as risk trades took another pounding. USD/JPY did its regular 20-pip chop in Europe and then plunged through stops below 80.00 and 101 in EUR/JPY. Cross selling continued in wave after wave, knocking USD/JPY to 79.13 at the European close.
EUR/USD bottomed at the outset of US trading at 1.2666. Speculation about QE3 after the Philly Fed helped the pair to 1.2736 and the new Greek poll helped but the gains were fleeting, falling below 1.27 in late trading.
The late-day swoon in the stock market weighed especially on commodity currencies. USD/CAD is brushing up against 1.02 and AUD/USD has retreated below 0.9900 after touching 0.9950.