Daily Market Report – 21/04/2015

EUR
Talks between Greece and the Eurogroup continued
yesterday, however little progress has so far been made. Eurogroup head
Dijsselbloem said there was a possibility a deal between Greece and their
Eurozone counterparts can be reached. However this was conflicting with a
comment made by German Finance minister Schaeuble who was less optimistic
saying he doubts an agreement will be reached at the Eurogroup meeting on April

EUR
Talks between Greece and the Eurogroup continued
yesterday, however little progress has so far been made. Eurogroup head
Dijsselbloem said there was a possibility a deal between Greece and their
Eurozone counterparts can be reached. However this was conflicting with a
comment made by German Finance minister Schaeuble who was less optimistic
saying he doubts an agreement will be reached at the Eurogroup meeting on April
24
th. Elsewhere, Greek Deputy PM Ioannis Dragasakis said that
should negotiations fail then the government may have to consider snap
elections.


ECB president Draghi reitereated yesterday that the ECB are to maintain their
quantitative easing program until the central bank hits its inflation target of
2%, which suggests that this will continue for quite some time. There was not
much released in terms of data yesterday, the only piece of note being German
producer price index figures, coming out slightly worse than expected at -1.7%
against a -1.6% consensus however this was to be expected with the recent dip
in energy markets.

USD
The US Dollar managed
to make gains against most of its counterparts yesterday, however this seemed
to be more sentiment based as there was a lack of data released from the US
yesterday. The US sold $48bn worth of 3 and 6 month bonds, pushing the yield
down to 0.025% and 0.090% respectively.

With the ongoing
situation in Europe and the lack of growth from China, the USD has maintained
its safe-haven status however this has the ability to damage US exports with
the USD being so low. Fed member Dudley stated that a strong dollar makes the
US outlook more of an unknown, also IBM stated that whilst revenues have been
down 12% this year, 8% of this accounts for the strength of the USD damaging
their exports. The Chicaco Fed National Activity Index (an index designed to
gauge overall economic activity) came out at -0.42 yesterday, in comparison
with the revised -0.18 last month.

 
Key Announcements
No major news out today. 

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