Oil closed slightly down, closing $35.94 per barrel end of New York session. Stock markets slightly improved, Dow Jones rose 50 points and NASDAQ rose 6 points. On the Data front, December Trade Balance came in -39.9bn vs. -41.6bn before. Data coming out are weekly Jobless claims; they are anticipated to come in at 610K vs. 626K before. Also due out today are January Retail figures.
The Euro had a brief rally against US$ it traded a low of the day at 1.2835 ending the day 1.2900 at the end of New York session. The Euro Major gain was against Sterling reaching 0.9000 before reaching just below at end of session.
On the data front CPI figure for January was in at -0.5%. Data coming out today is Industrial Production for December.
The Sterling was the major mover in the market. The Euro and US$ gained huge amounts, this was mainly to do with BOE governor Mervyn King saying the UK is in deep recession, inflation to fall to 0.5% in two years, economy to fall much larger than last year.
These were amongst other comments which were made and huge selling of Sterling. Data front, the Unemployment figures came in slightly better than expected at 73.8K against 90 forecast.