Oil is at the highest since October, but nevertheless US equities closed in negative territory yesterday. Equity indices were not helped by comments from 2 non-voting members of the Fed, that re-iterated that the possibility of two or three rate hikes this year was still in the cards. The limelight will now move to the release of the minutes of the Fed’s last April meeting, as traders look for new clues.
The USD is close to testing Friday’s highs of 94.84 today as the US dollar index (DXY) is currently trading at 94.75. The USD has been recovering April losses all throughout May so far.
Japan’s annualized Q1 GDP exceeded expectations by a good margin, data issued this morning showed that the annualized figure was out at 1.7% while the the Q/Q was out at 0.5%. The JPY garnered strength with the USDJPY briefly dipping to 108.72 earlier in today’s session. The gains were short lived however and the USDJPY is now back above 109 levels.
The British pound is weaker against the USD today as the currency pair drifted to session lows of 1.4431 this morning. Yesterday a poll showing that the “In” was in the lead pushed the currency pair to 1.4524 but gains fizzled out throughout Tuesday as UK got softer inflation numbers.
Today we got unemployment data from the UK, EZ CPI and US Fed FOMC minutes later this evening.
