Currencies Round up (10th December 2009)

FX Morning update - US dollar and Sterling near their lows in Asia The pound was the main focus on the currency markets yesterday as the UK Chancellor Alistair Darling delivered his pre-budget report. Unfortunately he decided to defer any cuts in spending until after the election leaving next year's spending plans pretty much intact, and this combined with the news that Spain's outlook had been downgraded to "negative" sent stock markets and the pound lower on the day, against a basket of currencies. The pound will also be in focus again today as the Bank of England meets for the last time in 2009. Unfortunately for the market I don't think they will be giving out any early Christmas presents as they are expected to leave interest rates unchanged and also leave the level of QE the same as well so it should pass by without too much comment. Overnight in Asia the US dollar index also declined after a forecast by economists that initial US jobless claims would fall for the sixth week in succession, when they are published this afternoon. EURUSD - the Euro continues to consolidate at the lower levels we saw yesterday. Yesterday's low at 1.4665/70 has held so far, and rallies have so far been restricted to the highs yesterday of 1.4785. The Euro needs to get back above 1.4820 initially, and then 1.4890 to stabilise, otherwise we could see a test of 1.4620 initially, and after that 1.4500.

	GBP	AUD	CAD	JPY	EUR	CHF	USD
GBP	1.0000	1.7791	1.7149	143.1375	1.1045	1.6711	1.6272
AUD	0.5621	1.0000	0.9639	80.4546	0.6208	0.9393	0.9146
CAD	0.5831	1.0374	1.0000	83.4662	0.6440	0.9744	0.9489
JPY	0.0070	0.0124	0.0120	1.0000	0.0077	0.0117	0.0114
EUR	0.9054	1.6108	1.5527	129.5987	1.0000	1.5130	1.4733
CHF	0.5984	1.0647	1.0262	85.6566	0.6609	1.0000	0.9738
USD	0.6145	1.0934	1.0539	87.9650	0.6787	1.0270	1.0000