Euro trade on hold ahead of the ECB decision

Good Morning,

- Euro trade on hold ahead of the ECB decision, after previous day's wide ranges and choppy trading.

- Asian shares held near eight-week highs on Thursday as investors bet on the likely size of a bond-buying program from ECB.

- A source told Reuters the ECB's has proposed a quantitative easing (QE) program that would enable the bank to buy 50 billion euro in bonds per month from March.

- The Canadian dollar stole trade more calm after plunging to a nearly six-year low following the Bank of Canada's surprise move to slash its overnight rate to help cushion the economy from recently plunging oil prices. The loonie skidded almost 2 percent - its biggest one-day drop since November 2011 - to as far as $1.2420 per U.S. dollar.

- The Swiss National Bank is keeping all options open after scrapping a cap on the franc against the euro which would have cost 100 billion francs (76 billion pounds) to defend this month alone, one rate-setter told a Swiss paper. "We have turned away from the cap. We are keeping all our monetary policy options open," SNB board member Fritz Zurbruegg told in a newspaper, when asked whether the central bank might cap the franc again to prevent the economy from becoming unbalanced by funds seeking shelter from the global financial crisis.

- Zurbruegg said it was too early to gauge whether the economy might enter recession and the central bank had no indication Switzerland could enter a deflationary spiral. "There will be a damper on economic growth. The extent is dependent on where the (franc) appreciation settles," he said.

- Deutsche Bank on EUR/USD: Believe In Draghi ? … Stay Short EUR/USD. In a note to clients today, Deutsche Bank advises staying short EUR/USD into today's historic ECB meeting expecting the pair to make fresh cycle lows over the next few weeks. DB outlines the following 3 reasons: 1. Positioning not that stretched. 2. Fundamental flows are driving the move. 3. ECB not fully priced and can over-deliver. DB targets 1.10 in EUR/USD over the coming weeks.

- Spanish employment increased by 65,100 people in the fourth quarter versus the third, until a total of 17,569,100. It is the first increase in a fourth quarter since 2006.

- BOJ Monthly Report: Japan's economy has continued to recover moderately as a trend, and effects such as those of the decline in demand following the front - loaded increase prior to the consumption tax hike have been waning on the whole. Overseas economies -- mainly advanced economies -- have been recovering, albeit with a lackluster performance still seen in part. The BOJ maintained its bullish inflation outlook for 2016 even as it cut its 2015 projections following falls in oil prices in recent months.

- U.S. shale drillers won’t scale back output quickly enough for OPEC to avoid production cuts this year, according to a quarterly poll of Bloomberg subscribers. Forty-nine percent of analysts, traders and investors surveyed said the OPEC will have to lower its production target this year, while 34 percent said shale drillers will lower output in time. Seventeen percent were not sure. Fifty-eight percent of respondents who said OPEC will cut its production target expect it to happen in the second half of the year, compared to 34 percent who see it happening before the end of June.

- Emerging-market stocks and currencies are luring global investors for all the wrong reasons right now. A quarterly Bloomberg Poll showed there was a two-fold surge in the number of respondents who identified developing-nation equities and currencies as the assets they’d most like to bet against. For currencies, the percentage jumped to 12 percent from 6 percent in November while for stocks, it rose to 7 percent from 3 percent. Investor confidence in emerging markets is faltering as China posts the slowest economic expansion in 24 years, Russia remains embroiled in the Ukraine conflict and Brazil slips into stagflation.

- Watch today: Italian retail, US jobless claims and.. ECB..!! ..,

Have a nice Day !