Daily Market News 15 Mar 2011

Daily Market News 15 Mar 2011

 

Market movers yesterday

  • The main news coming from the UK on Monday was regarding the UK’s triple AAA credit rating from rating agency Fitch. Fitch said it was keeping its AAA sovereign rating with a stable outlook this saw GBP/USD trade just below 1.6200 and GBP/EUR 1.1600 in London trade.
  • The only piece of data from the euro zone came in the way of European industrial production. These figures came in lower than market expectations but in line with last month’s figures, however these had very little effect towards the euro as risk appetite continued to enter the currency markets along with comments from EU leaders regarding the European stability fund.
  • The euro gained against the British Pound on Monday and was course to test 4 month highs as the currency was boosted by an unexpected deal to strengthen a euro zone bailout fund and hawkish views to rates and the ECB.
  • EU leaders agreed to increase the effective lending capacity of the European Financial Stability fund to the full €440bn from €250bn and enabled the fund to buy bonds of distressed countries in the euro zone this also added to the euro’s gain against the greenback as euro/dollar traded just below the 1.4000 level in afternoon trade.  The fund should ensure the capability of bailing out any euro zone countries like we saw in the aid of Greece and Ireland in 2011.
  • There was no data from the United States yesterday.

Market movers today

  • The only piece of data from the UK comes in the way of Nation Wide consumer confidence; these figures are looking to come in at 47. We did see a big move in sterling last month when these figures came out better than expected and another positive figure could see sterling trade higher against its counterparts.
  • In the Euro zone we have two pieces of data from European and Germany in the way of the ZEW Survey. These are both looking to come in better than expected and are going a long way to show that both the Euro zone and Germany are progressing with many people more optimistic regarding consumer confidence this could see the euro possibly gain if the figures are well received.
  • The main piece of data from the United States comes in the form of the FOMC regarding interest rates. The Fed will look to yet again leave its key bench mark lending rate at 0.25bps and QE programme unchanged at $600bn.