The upcoming Easter holiday weekend and a slew of earnings reports by US financial institutions next week made the FX markets look stuck in the mud today as the ranges were small and the excitement sparse. The Yen lost some of the ground it made in late NY trading despite surprisingly decent Machinery Orders data, with USD/JPY drifting above 100.00 briefly to post a net gain of about 20 pips for the session. Rumors out of Japan are that the upcoming stimulus package could be worth up to 15 trillion yen. EUR/JPY was slightly higher, moving in a 54 pip range between 132.01 and 132.55. The EUR/USD was even more lackluster, stuck in 39 pip sideways range despite bad news out of the UK Times stating that Germany's economy was second only to Japan in weakness.
The one big data release was in Australia, where the Unemployment number hit 5.7% with employment dropping by 34,000, both numbers worse than projected. The AUD/USD dropped a quick 40 pips to a low near 0.7050, but it was all uphill from there as the pair gradually made its way back to highs near 0.7115. With the markets slowing down for the week, the big hurrah will be the Bank of England's rate decision which will be later at 11:00GMT, where the consensus is that they will leave rates unchanged at 0.50%
Upcoming Economic Data Releases (London Session):
| 4/9/2009 | 5:45 | SZ | Unemployment Rate | MAR | 3.40% | 3.50% |
| 4/9/2009 | 5:45 | SZ | Unemployment Rate (sa) | MAR | 3.10% | 3.30% |
| 4/9/2009 | 6:00 | JN | Machine Tool Orders (YoY) | MAR P | -84.40% | - - |
| 4/9/2009 | 6:00 | GE | Consumer Price Index (MoM) | MAR F | 0.60% | -0.10% |
| 4/9/2009 | 6:00 | GE | Consumer Price Index (YoY) | MAR F | 1.00% | 0.50% |
| 4/9/2009 | 6:00 | GE | CPI - EU Harmonised (MoM) | MAR F | -0.20% | -0.20% |
| 4/9/2009 | 6:00 | GE | CPI - EU Harmonised (YoY) | MAR F | 0.40% | 0.40% |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | PPI Input NSA (MoM) | MAR | 0.60% | 0.90% |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | PPI Input NSA (YoY) | MAR | 0.50% | -0.70% |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | PPI Output n.s.a. (MoM) | MAR | 0.10% | 0.10% |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | PPI Output n.s.a. (YoY) | MAR | 3.10% | 2.10% |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | PPI Output Core NSA (MoM) | MAR | 0.00% | 0.10% |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | PPI Output Core NSA (YoY) | MAR | 3.70% | 3.10% |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | Visible Trade Balance GBP/Mn | FEB | -£7745 | -£7600 |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | Trade Balance Non EU GBP/Mn | FEB | -£5704 | -£5500 |
| 4/9/2009 | 8:30 | UK | Total Trade Balance (GBP/Mln) | FEB | -£3585 | -£3450 |
| 4/9/2009 | 10:00 | GE | Industrial Production MoM (sa) | FEB | -7.50% | -3.00% |
| 4/9/2009 | 10:00 | GE | Industrial Prod. YoY (nsa wda) | FEB | -19.30% | -21.70% |
