News

Headlines:

• Dollar steadier as risk bounces a little ahead of European trading today
• Dow futures turn negative as UnitedHealth lowers annual profit forecast
• China maintains it is open to negotiations with US on trade, calls for mutual respect
• Japan finance minister expresses deep concern over impact of Trump’s tariffs
• Trump: Jerome Powell is always too late and wrong
• The ECB is 100% going to cut today but what’s expected for the other central banks?
• ECB set to deliver its sixth consecutive 25 bps rate cut, eyes on restrictive language
• What are analysts saying ahead of the ECB policy decision later?
• BOJ’s Nakagawa: Difficult to assess the impact of US tariffs at the moment
• Germany March PPI -0.7% vs -0.1% m/m expected
• Reminder: Market closures in observance of the Easter break

Markets:

• USD leads, CHF lags on the day
• European equities lower; S&P 500 futures down 0.4%
• US 10-year yields up 3.2 bps to 4.311%
• Gold down 0.6% to $3,324.48
• WTI crude up 1.4% to $63.35
• Bitcoin up 0.2% to $84,489

It was a relatively quiet session in terms of headlines, with just some light market movements as well overall.

A slight bounce in the risk mood is keeping the dollar steadier and that held for the most part during the session. UnitedHealth reported poor Q1 earnings and slashed its profit outlook and that dragged Dow futures down late on, weighing slightly on the market mood as well. Dow futures turned negative on the news, falling by over 1% with UnitedHealth of course comprising of roughly 9% of the index – the biggest in terms of weightage.

Still, S&P 500 futures are up 0.4% with tech shares leading the way. Nasdaq futures are up 0.7% currently.

In FX, the dollar is recovering a little bit of ground after the declines yesterday. EUR/USD is down 0.3% to 1.1365 with USD/JPY up 0.5% to 142.55 on the day. USD/CHF is continuing to keep off its recent lows, up 0.5% to 0.8170 on the day. Meanwhile, USD/CAD is up 0.3% to 1.3890 and AUD/USD down 0.2% to 0.6358 at the moment.

Elsewhere, the bond market continues to keep steadier while gold is easing back a touch after racing to fresh record highs yesterday. The precious metal is still holding well above $3,300 though, not showing much signs of letting up.

As things stand, it’s still about watching out for trade/Trump headlines while at the same time figuring out how the tariffs are going to keep weighing on the global economy during the interim.

For now, markets are keeping the calm. At this stage, it’s either we get some positive developments on trade first or hard data that shows the negative drag from tariffs first. If the latter comes earlier, that will be the next hammer to fall on risk sentiment. But if it is the former, then markets can start to look to grow to be more optimistic at least.

Coming up later, we’ll have the ECB policy decision and US weekly jobless claims to contend with as well.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

As a reminder, we’ll have market closures in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, as well as the UK in the coming two business days. It is that time of the year where the Easter Bunny is out to play for the weekend. In Europe, the Euronext, Xetra, and LSE are all closed as well as the TARGET services. So, that means extremely thin liquidity conditions during the upcoming sessions. It leaves only North America trading to observe normal market flows. To those celebrating, have a great break and enjoy the weekend!

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

• Need to roll out policy measures at critical timing, act early and swiftly
• Should deliver policies precisely, enhance communications with markets
• Should guide formation of clear, stable market expectations

His other remarks are pretty normal but the headline comment stands out a little. That appears to be a cryptic message perhaps on trade relations with a certain someone surely.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

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