Morning Roll Call

In a quiet trading day, due to the extended Easter holiday period, the main indices in the USA closed up on the day in relatively thin trading conditions. The high impact news published in the afternoon session mainly included major mortgage lenders in the USA revamping their forecasts for the housing market. Both federally controlled […]

The main USA bourses experienced relatively quiet sessions on Thursday as the Good Friday holiday approached. The latest weekly unemployment claimant count from the USA crept up above the critical 300K level to give a reading of 304K, up 2K from the previous week’s revised figure. In other USA based news the Philly Fed manufacturing

Euro inflation was reported on Wednesday at 0.5%, as many investors and analysts begin to worry that deflation may in fact begin to become an issue for the euro region and the wider EA region, negative annual rates were observed in Bulgaria (-2.0%), Greece (-1.5%), Cyprus (-0.9%), Portugal and Sweden (both -0.4%), Spain and Slovakia

The main indices in the USA whipsawed violently throughout the day in reaction to the developing news breaking from the Ukraine. Having opened up in positive territory the indices fell back, to then close up as improved and better than expected figures from Yahoo late on cheered the market and caused Yahoo shares to rise

Despite tensions mounting once again in the Ukraine and USA focused investors being concerned that many of the USA indices might be overbought as reporting season begins, the main indices in the USA shot up after retail data in the USA rose sharply at 1.1%, busting expectations of a modest 0.5% rise month on month.

As earnings season officially begins in the USA concerns that valuations are sky high, in particular on the heavily tech invested NASDAQ market, caused jitters that reverberated across global markets. The dollar also fell versus the majority of its major peers, falling to a five-month low against a basket of peers on speculation a drop

The main indices in New York rose sharply towards the end of the trading sessions as the FOMC meeting minutes were released, due to passages within the minutes which appeared to contradict many analysts’ thoughts regarding the pace of interest rate rises. The Fed appears to be backtracking on earlier protestations and is now suggesting

There was extremely positive news regarding the UK published in the morning, firstly the IMF opined that in their opinion the UK’s growth in terms of GDP will be the highest in Europe and higher than the USA’s at 2.9% in 2014. Secondly and perhaps the reason cable exploded to the upside despite the UK

There were slightly conflicting and concerning reports published on Monday concerning the USA consumer; firstly consumer credit rose by 6.4% in February mainly for college loans, auto purchases and home mortgages, secondly the amount Americans reported spending each day in March averaged $87 for the month, identical to February. While spending remains relatively high, this

USA unemployment numbers came in below expectations, In the week ending March 29, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 326,000, an increase of 16,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 310,000. With NFP numbers being printed on Friday traders would be advised to trade with extreme caution as the print has