Europe Summary and Highlights 11 April

European morning session

The USD continued to decline across the board through the European morning, with the JPY, EUR and CHF continuing to be the main beneficiaries. EUR/USD gained more than a big figure to 1.1385, and USD/JPY fell 1.5 big figures to 142.50. USD/CHF fell from 0.8250 and bottomed out at 0.8110 before recovering to 0.82.

The FX moves were correlated to equity market performance. S&P futures and European equities started the session slightly firmer but fell back through the morning, with the USD and the riskier currencies falling with equities, although there has been some recovery in both towards the end of the morning.

Early in the session, GBP gained a modest boost from stronger than expected February GDP data, which showed a 0.5% m/m gain against a market consensus of a 0.1% rise, with manufacturing output particularly strong. EUR/GBP initially dropped around 20 pips to 0.8660, but resumed its gains as equities fell back, topping out at 0.8735 before dropping back to near opening levels by te end of the morning.

Asia session

USD is broadly soft on Friday, along with risk asset. The DXY has fallen to level last seen in July 2023 as U.S. Treasury yields trades lower for the session. USD/JPY tried to challenge the 142 figure by touching a session low at 142.86 before retracing partial losses to trade 0.85% lower at 143.2.

Major equity indexes has rebounded from their session low. In the earlier Asia session, U.S. equities were taking another dive as market participants are spooked by the potentially worsening of U.S. economy. But as session progress, sentiment turns calm with major U.S. equity indexes close to unchanged while regional equities in Chinese and HK in the green, Japanese equities continue to bleed. AUD/USD is trading 0.66% lower at 0.6183, NZD/USD is trading 0.47% higher at 0.5767 while USD/CAD slips 0.09%. Else, EUR/USD is up 0.65% and GBP/USD is up 0.34%.