[B]Market Review[/B] - 06/02/2014 [I]18:10GMT [/I]
[B]Euro jumps from 1.3483 to 1.3619 as ECB refraines from announcing any additional stimulus measures[/B]
Despite brief drop to 1.3483, the single currency jumped to as high as 1.3619 on Thursday after ECB’s president Draghi said there is no eurozone deflation problem and need to wait for more data before taking action, following ECB kept interest unchanged.
The greenback rallied from 101.25 to 102.00 against the Japanese yen due to improved risk appetite (euro rose strongly against the Japanese yen from 136.80 to 138.80) as global stock markets rebounded.
On the data front, U.S. initial jobless claims fell by 20,000, bigger-than-expected, to a seasonally adjusted 331,000 last week. The U.S. trade deficit widened to $38.7 billion in December as exports fell and imports rose.
Despite early brief drop to 1.6272, the British pound rebounded after the Bank of England kept interest range unchanged at 0.5% as widely expected. BOE also left QE asset purchase total unchanged at 375 billion sterling. BOE makes no statement after monetary policy decision. Cable later rebounded to 1.6348 on short-covering in tandem with euro in New York.
Australian dollar extended gain to 0.8981 against U.S. currency after the release of Australia’s trade data as the exports exceeded imports by A$468 million ($420 million) in December.
In other news, European Central Bank policymaker Christian Noyer told Les Echos daily in an interview to appear in its Friday edition that 'the euro zone’s fragile economic recovery and low inflation is “not normal, but not alarming.”
[B]Friday will see[/B] the release of RBA policy statement, Japan’s leading indicators, Germany’s trade data, U.K. trade balance, industrial and manufacturing production, German industrial production, Canada’s unemployment rate and the important U.S. non-farm payrolls.