- ECB’s Stark: Euro-bonds are a false solution, would provide wrong incentives
- Earthquake shakes buildings in Tokyo. Preliminary magnitude 6.8 earthquake
- Rumour: Swiss National Bank may implement new tax on foreign held CHF deposits as early as this weekend
- Finland: No compromise on Greek collateral issue
- Greek FinMin: Economy will shrink by over 4.5% in 2011
- Dutch FinMin: Would consider taking extra budget cuts if tax income comes in worse than expected
- ECB buys Italian bonds…..again
- UK July PSNB -1.961 bln, better than median forecast +0.5 bln
- A shaken Europe looks for bolder fixes – WSJ
TGIF!!!……..and I mean that most sincerely folks.
Fairly busy session. Choppy, but at the end of the day not a huge lot of net change in the major spots and crosses.
EUR/USD sits at 1.4315 from an early 1.4305. Inbetween we’ve been as low as 1.4258 followed by a robust recovery which stretched to 1.4344 at one stage. Single currency got hit early, not helped by reports Finland may not participate in Greek bailout and comments from Stark that he’s against euro zone bonds.
We got as low 1.4258 where good Russian buying emerged. Notable real money buying then helped propel us back up through 1.4300. Talk of decent-sized sell orders up at 1.4350/60 subsequently helped cap the recovery.
USD/JPY unchanged at 76.43. We slipped as low as 76.30 on Japanese name selling (slightly surprising) However reports had decent buy orders (400 mln plus) lined up on EBS at 76.25/30 and this was enough to stymie the sell-off for now.
Cable marginally firmer at 1.6495 from early 1.6475. Talk of ongoing fix demand (most probably M&A related) and better than expected public finance data have helped underpin the pairing.
USD/CHF marginally easier at .7900 from early 79.35.
