Gold moves higher leading into the EU session
London (Feb 18) Gold and silver are mixed heading into the US session. Although this looks like a relief rally in gold after a tough session on Wednesday. Silver, on the other hand, held up better than the yellow metal and continues to trade above the $27/oz level.
After a mixed hand over from the US, bourses in the Asia Pac area were also all over the place. Chinese trades came back to the market after a week-long holiday for golden week. The Shanghai Composite traded 0.55% higher, while the Nikkei 225 fell 0.19% and the ASX managed to closed just above flat.
FX markets were pretty quiet as dollar index traded pretty much flat and AUD/NZD trading higher moving 0.18% higher overnight. In the base metals complex, copper moved 2.34% higher and some analyst's are citing Chinese demand.
Overnight the PBOC injected 200bn yuan through their MLF facility. In the weeks before "Golden Week" there was a significant drain in their liquidity operations so this could be welcome news for equity markets.
FOMC meeting minutes last night proved to be pretty uneventful as they stated they have not achieved their inflation or employment targets. The guidance for asset purchases remains the same and the operation will continue at its current pace until the central bank moves closer to reaching its goals.
In Italy, Mario Draghi won a vote of confidence at the senate. The Senate voted 262-40 with two abstentions to back Draghi’s government.
Australian employment change data for January printed at 29.1K missing the consensus estimate of 40.0K. Having said that the unemployment rate fell to 6.4% vs 6.5% expected.
Bloomberg have reported that Thyssenkrupp has ended talks with Liberty Steel Group about potentially selling its steel division and will try to make the business self-sustainable. Thyssenkrupp's CFO said there were material differences over corporate value.
WTI and Brent moved another leg higher after it was reported that as much as 4 million barrels per day have come offline due to weather conditions in the US.
Looking ahead to the rest of the session highlights include ECB meeting minutes, Turkish rate decision, US building permits, US initial jobless claims, weekly DoE's and comments from ECB's Schnabel, Fed's Brainard, BoE's Saunders and German Buba Wuermeling.
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