The AUD is the strongest and the JPY is the weakest as the North American session begins.
The focus today will shift away from Russian/Ukraine and be on retail sales, industrial production and the Fed minutes from their January meeting.
The retail sales are expected to retrace the December -1.9% decline with an advance of 2.1%.
Industrial production is expected to show a gain of 0.4% vs -0.1%.
Business inventories, NAHB housing market index and the weekly crude oil inventory data round out the economic calendar in the US this morning. The private oil data near the end of day yesterday showed a draw of -1.076M barrels vs -220K est. Gasoline inventories had a draw of -923K vs -900K est.
Canada will release their CPI (+0.6% MoM, Common YoY 2.1% est.) and Manufacturing and wholesale sales at 8:30 AM ET, making for a pretty lumpy data dump day.
Later this afternoon (2 PM ET), the minutes of the Fed meeting will be released. Recall from the meeting minutes release from the December, the markets were surprised with the increased elevation on balance sheet reduction which helped to push yields sharply higher. Will there be another surprise today? Traders will be focused at 2 PM.
In Russia/Ukraine news, the commentary is on how the buildup of troops has not decreased as per Russian sources. There have also been a cyber attack in Ukraine which is a non-militaristic means of attack.
In the UK today, inflation came in a bit higher than expectations (5.5% vs 5.4% for headline and 4.4% vs 4.3% for the core) which has pushed the GBPUSD marginally higher today and back above the 100/200 hour MAs and 50% midpoint near 1.3545 to 1.3552.
On the auction calendar, the U.S. Treasury will auction off 20 year bonds at 1 PM ET.
Fed's Kashkari is scheduled to speak.
A snapshot of markets currently shows:
- Spot gold is trading down -$1.26 or -0.06% at $1852.20
- Spot silver is up two cents or 0.05% at $23.36
- WTI crude oil futures are trading up $0.97 at $93.03
- Bitcoin is trading at $43,992. Which is down about $600 from yesterday's close
In the premarket for US stocks, the major indices are all lower after the gains yesterday
- Dow industrial average is down -52 points after yesterdays 422.67 point gain
- S&P index is down -9.2 points after yesterday's 69.42 point gain
- NASDAQ index is down -32 points after gaining 348.84 point rise
In the European equity markets, the major indices are marginally lower across the board after yesterday's sharp gains (1.0% to 2.09%):
- German DAX, -0.2%
- France's CAC, -0.15%
- UK's FTSE 100 -0.37%
- Italy's FTSE MIB -0.5%
- Spain's Ibex -0.3%
In the US debt market, yields are marginally lower to start the day. The 10 year does remain above the 2.00% level.
In the European debt market, the yields have moved lower on the day
