The USD is mixed in early NA trading
As the North American session gets underway, the AUD is the strongest and the GBP is the weakest. The GBP is moving lower after a run higher failed. The USD is mixed ahead of the weekly US jobless claims which are expected to show another 820K rise (vs. 837 last week). European concerns remain on Brexit and the spread of the coronavirus where Spain, France, Germany are looking at record increases.
The ranges and changes for the major currency pairs below shows very modest price action. Apart from the GBPUSD range of 78 pips, the other major currency pairs vs. the US dollar have low to high trading ranges of 50 pips or less with the USDJPY at a low 17 pips for the entire day so far. The USDCHF at 27 pips and the EURSD at 30 pips are not much better. The GBPUSD is trading near the low for the day after trading as high as +50 pips on the day earlier. The EURUSD, USDJPY, USDCHF and NZDUSD are all within 6 pips of unchanged on the day highlighting the steadiness of the greenback. The JPY crosses - typically a barometer for risk on or risk off - are mixed.
A snapshot of other markets currently shows:
- Spot gold is trading up $4.72 or 0.25% at $1892.14
- Spot silver is up $0.16 or 0.7% at $23.97
- WTI crude oil futures trading higher by $0.65 or 1.62% at $40.61
In the premarket for US stocks, the futures markets are trading higher in premarket activity. The futures are implying
- The Dow Jones up 210 points. Yesterday the index rose by 530.7 points
- S&P index is up 13.56 points after yesterdays rise of 58.5 points
- NASDAQ is up an additional 65 points after yesterdays oversized 209.99 point gain
In the European equity markets, the major indices are higher
- German DAX, +0.6%
- France's CAC, +0.46%
- UK's FTSE 100, +0.5%
- Spain's Ibex, +1.2%
- Italy's FTSE MIB, +0.5%
In the US debt market, the snapshot of yields are moving lower with the yield curve flattening a bit. The 2-10 year spread as moved to 62.17 basis points from 63.61 basis points at the close yesterday:
In the European debt market, the benchmark 10 year yields are also lower, with Spanish yields leading the way to the downside at -3.6 basis points in the morning snapshot.
