North America Summary and Highlights 8 Jan
Lower oil prices helped to produce a dip in U.S. Treasury yields in NY and a drift lower in the USD in quiet trading. The FX market is waiting for the U.S. CPI release later in the week.
North American session
The USD fell back across the board through a largely newsless North American session, which nevertheless saw US yields move generally lower, helped by lowr oil prices, boosting equities and undermining the USD. The EUR and CAD were the weakest performers, gaining only around 0.2% while the JPY, GBP and commodity currencies gained around 0.4%.
European morning session
A quiet European morning session saw some mild weakness in the AUD and some initial strength in the CHF, but otherwise relatively little FX movement. AUD dropped around 10 pips to 0.6695, suffering from the aftermath of the Zhongzhi bankruptcy overnight, while EUR/CHF initially fell around 25 pips to 0.9290 in reaction to stronger than expected Swiss CPI data for December. This showed a 1.7% y/y rise against market expectations of a 1.5% gain. November retail sales were also stronger than expected, but the initial drop was largely reversed by the end of the morning.
EUR/USD and USD/JPY were little changed. German November trade data showed a stronger than expected 3.7% rise in exports and 1.9% rise in imports, and a larger than expected EUR 20.4bn trade surplus. German November manufacturing orders were a little weaker than expected, rising 0.3% m/m, so only marginally above the October level which equalled the lowest since the pandemic.