Entering into US session, Dollar and Yen are both regaining some grounds as financial markets turned mixed. There are positive reports on US-China trade negotiation, which should be in its final stage. Trump scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Premier Liu He at 2030 GMT and a summit with Xi could be finally announced. Yet, that provides little lift to market sentiments in general. The greenback is somewhat supported additionally by strong initial jobless claims, that fell to lowest since 1969. But the real critical one is tomorrow’s no-farm payrolls.
Meanwhile, news out of Europe are generally negative. Germany factory orders contracted sharply by -4.2% mom in March. Germany’s leading economic institutes lowered economic growth forecasts for the country in 2019 sharply to 0.8%, down from 1.9%. Italy is said to revise down growth forecasts to as low as 0.1% in 2019, thus raising budget deficit target to 2.3-2.4%. ECB accounts revealed that some policymakers considered pushing timing of first hike to after Q1 2020. There is no special progress in Brexit in UK even though April 12 cliff edge is approaching. Nevertheless, Euro isn’t too weak at all. The worst performing ones for now are New Zealand Dollar and Sterling.
In Europe, currently:
- FTSE is down -0.41%.
- DAX is up 0.24%.
- CAC is down -0.18%.
- Germany 10-year yield is down -0.012 at -0.01, back in negative territory.
Earlier in Asia:
- Nikkei rose 0.05%.
- Hong Kong HSI dropped -0.17%.
- China Shanghai SSE rose 0.94%.
- Singapore Strait Times rose 0.15%.
- Japan 10-year JGB yield rose 0.0108 to -0.04.
