A rather mixed morning that started promisingly enough and then just fizzled out into nothing with EUR/USD returning to opening levels having run into offers ahead of 1.3470 stops.

Somewhat after the event I hear that the BIS was loitering up around the day’s high of 1.3464, and we’ve since drifted back down to as low as 1.3414. There is a large 2 bln euro 1.3400 strike rolling off at the NY cut today which should make reactions around the 1230 GMT NFP data release interesting.

Cable was the liveliest mover on the session with a couple of waves of short squeezing from the off. We jumped from around 1.5435 to 1.5498 very quickly, but the market slowed as Moody’s news of downgrades to a dozen UK banks came to light.

This was largely expected and another squeeze broke the 1.5500 level to 1.5553, before dribbling lower again to 1.5500 as EUR/USD eased back. EUR/GBP back tracked yesterday’s post BOE rally with a move down from 0.8700 to 0.8650 lending support to cable for most of the morning

USD/JPY carried on in its usual comatose way with EUR/JPY walking the footsteps of EUR/USD through a 102.83-103.15 range.

AUD/USD opened firm, pushing up through 0.9800 on EUR/AUD fund sales, and then exporter AUD/USD buying to 0.9817; slipping back later on
some profit taking towards 0.9770

European equities were largely quiet, down fractionally on the morning. Gold was steady around $1655 , with Nov WTI crude off around $1 at $82.15