Morning Briefing : Fear is back on the market

What’s new:
Forex: Italian Parliamentary elections weighing on EUR/USD
Global Markets: US and Asian Equities dropped

Overnight rates and Indices:
EUR/USD       1.3037     1.3089         -0.09 %
USD/CHF       0.9287      0.933            0.07 %
GBP/USD       1.515       1.5219          0.09 %
USD/JPY        91.59        92.75            0.18 %
EUR/CHF       1.2120     1.21971        0.18 %
EUR/JPY        119.42      121.36           0.26 %
Dow Jones    13784.01    14081.58   -1.54 %
Nasdaq          2700.97      2763.96     -1.32 %
S&P 500        1487.85     1525.84      -1.83 %
Nikkei 225    11374.83    11520.24    -2.26 %
Shanghai       2289.89      2340.71     -1.52 %
Gold spot      1589.98      1598.48      -0.06 %
Crude Oil         91.92         92.65          -0.66 %

Comments:
Overnight, Asian and US equities markets dropped on concerns that an Italian political paralysis could possibly hurt the European economy.

The current macro outlook is not encouraging for the global economy and fear is back to haunt the markets. Yesterday the VIX index, known as the fear index, spiked more than 20% on raising concerns about the European economic situation. Indeed the combination of the UK downgrade and political paralysis concerns, arising after the Italian Parliamentary elections, gave traders good reasons to take a step aside and take the accumulated profits they had made after the recent market rally.

We can notice interesting moves on the forex market, the EUR/USD drop to 1.30 levels; Sunday’s opening gap for the GBP/USD was partially filled as the pair hit 1.5219 earlier this morning. Even the USD/JPY experienced a deep plunge yesterday slipping from 94.37 to 90.89 in one day.

Today major events will be the inflation report for United Kingdom, the Consumer Confidence figures coming from the USA and the speech of Ben Bernanke on the state of the US economy and the US dollar.

Good day,

Vincent Pellizzari - Junior Trader - RTFX Ltd