Europe Summary and Highlights 9 October
There was little net change in any of the majors through the European morning.
European morning session
There was little net change in any of the majors through the European morning. USD/JPY made a new high above 153 in early trade but fell back to opening levels near 152.50 by the end of the session. Early USD strength across the board was also mostly reversed by the end of the morning, although EUR/USD was around 10 pips lower at 1.1625.
There was little news of significance. There were some mildly dovish comments form the Fed’s Williams and mildly hawkish comments from the BoE’s Mann, but as these two are known as doves and hawks respectively, there was little market impact. There was little of note on the data front, with just German August trade data which showed a larger than expected surplus of EUR17.2bn due to weaker imports.
Asia session
Trump announced that Hamas has accepted his peace plan and will be returning hostages within 72 hours once Israel voted on it. It is also reported by multiple news outlet that both Hamas and Israel will be signing on the first phase of peace agreement soon. While it is great news for world peace progress, risk assets are seeing little encouragement while gold and oil dipped on the headline. USD/JPY is trading 0.11% lower at 152.51.
Despite the potential Israel-Hamas peace agreement, the U.S. equities are not in a cheerful mood. Regional equities, on the other hand, are more upbeat as we see Nikkei, HSI all perform strongly after a choppy start. AUD/USD is trading 0.29% higher at 0.6606, NZD/USD is trading 0.21% higher at 0.5799 while USD/CAD slips 0.1%. Else, EUR/USD is up 0.11% and GBP/USD is up 0.04%.