Daily Market News 20 May 2011

Yesterday’s market movers

  • UK retail sales April jumped to 2.8% YoY from 1.3% and 1.1% MoM from 0.2%, which are better than the market predictions. Sterling had moderate gain on the back of the news. However, the uptrend did not last long only finding support around 1.62 against US dollar.
  • US market in the afternoon opened with a bid tone of equities, which buoyed by the better than expected jobless claims data. US dollar eased against Sterling and Euro as market moved from currency to riskier investment.

    Yesterday’s market movers

    • UK retail sales April jumped to 2.8% YoY from 1.3% and 1.1% MoM from 0.2%, which are better than the market predictions. Sterling had moderate gain on the back of the news. However, the uptrend did not last long only finding support around 1.62 against US dollar.
    • US market in the afternoon opened with a bid tone of equities, which buoyed by the better than expected jobless claims data. US dollar eased against Sterling and Euro as market moved from currency to riskier investment.
    • Later Existing home sales April plunged to -0.8% against market consensus of 2% increase. The Philadelphia Fed Business Index for May went down to 3.9 while it was expected to increase more than the previous 18.5. The dollar had big movement on the figures, however, it did not get any inflows in order to be supported but continued its downwards trend. GBP/USD rebounded at 1.6205 and EUR/USD found support at 1.4205. Both pairs had been up for about 100 pips before the US market closed.

    Today’s market movers

    • German PPI YoY and MoM had good performance in April, both of which came in better than previous and expectation. EUR did not receive any momentum from it as it has gained position from the morning overbought.
    • EU Consumer Confidence for May is due to be release at -12 according to the estimation, worse than the -11.6 in April. This would not support the Euro as a fundamental however, Euro has been quiet in the past two days, and we might see some decent movement if there is any news coming from Greece and IMF.