Summary:

  • Thin trading amid lack of the US traders

  • UK service PMI beats expectations

  • Mixed session on the European stock markets

In the lack of US investors trading on Wednesday is thin. We are observing mixed session on the Old Continent where French and Spanish equities post gains while German and UK stocks are trading below yesterday’s closing prices. Taking a look at the FX market we can see that the Antipodean currencies (AUD and NZD) lost some of its morning shine. On the other hand, Scandinavian currencies emerged as leaders of the G10 basket while euro is underperforming against all of majors. When it comes to commodity market industrial metals are declining in general. Oil and precious metals trade mixed.

Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, decided to halt trading with all the coins it had in offer in response to “abnormal transactions” connected to the SYS token. Namely, unusual transactions on SYS order book caused some wild and unreasonable price swings. Binance admitted that there was one transaction where a single SYS was sold for… 96 Bitcoins.

The UK services sectors expanded in June at the fastest pace in eight months according to the Markit survey. It boosts odds for a rate hike in August and enhances a view that the second quarter growth will exceed the pace seen in the first three months. As a result of the release the pound is trading slightly higher against the dollar, and the technical backdrop seems to bode well.

European equities have seen a softer start to Wednesday’s trading taking a leaf out of Chinese indices’ book which are set to close clearly lower today. Meanwhile, looking at the daily chart of the German stock market one may hope that the index could see a bounce from the current levels even as it failed to move through 12380 points on Tuesday.

Both AUD and NZD are the strongest major currencies in the morning, and it may have something to do with strong readings of retail sales as well as services PMI from the Australian economy. In turn, the NZ dollar is higher mainly on the back of a slightly increased demand for riskier assets in general.