When all said and done, not alot of change overnight in Asia. The USD has managed the eek out some marginal gains, with EUR/USD down at 1.3420 from around 1.3455. The boost to risk sentiment seen yesterday seems to have run its course, at least for now, with an early rally in Asian stocks having run out of steam.
With the ECB and G20 meetings now out of the way, the market will focus in on this afternoon’s U.S non-farm payrolls/unemployment numbers for March. The median forecast range for nfps is -650/675k, while unemployment is seen up at 8.5%.
For today economic data for release is as follows:
07:15 GMT: Swiss CPI (Mar) flat m/m, -0.1% y/y
07:45 GMT: Italian PMI (Mar) expected 38.2
07:50 GMT: French PMI services (Mar) final expected 42.9
07:55 GMT: German PMI services (Mar) final expected 41.7
08:00 GMT: Euro zone PMI services (Mar) final expected 40.1, composite expected 37.6
08:30 GMT: UK PMI services (Mar) expected 43.5
08:30 GMT: UK official reserves (changes) (Mar)
09:00 GMT: Italian PPI (Feb) -0.5% m/m, -3.0% y/y.
