This time last year Bradford and Bingley reported a £108million profits for the first 4 months of the year, this year the organisation has made a loss of £8million. This resulted in a drop in share prices for Barclays, Halifax, Alliance and Leicester and Bank of Scotland which saw the day being named Black Monday. Shares for Bradford and Bingley dropped by 30% as some of their 3million customer database are having trouble repaying their loans. Rod Kent, executive chairman, said that it was the beginning of a recession and said that things are getting far worse than they anticipated and considerably quicker. Due out today for the UK is Halifax House Price Index, and Manufacturing PMI.
For the Euro zone, the International Monetary Fund have said that 15 countries out of the Euro zone have way too high inflation. The ECB's main focus is to control inflation rather than cutting rates, which indicates that rates will be kept on hold this month. The IMF did however say that the ECB should freeze borrowing costs, as there will be weaker exports due to the slowdown in the global market and the Euros strength against the USD. The main focus today is Trichet's Speech and the GDP and PPI data.
Due to the main focus being on the UK, the USD has taken a little back seat but is expected to be very volatile depending on the data out of the Euro zone and UK. Due out today is the ISM Manufacturing Index and ISM Manufacturing Prices.