Summary:

  • US stock benchmarks post decent gains after two days of losses

  • Canadian GDP print disappointed missing forecasts heavily

  • Inflation in Eurozone is expected to pick up

  • Bitcoin trades below $7.5k mark

Thursday trading session was the last one ahead of the Easter break in most of the countries. US equities managed to open higher after two days of heavy declines. Each of three benchmarks from Wall Street is posting over 1% gains at press time. Japanese yen is the strongest currency from the G10 basket while the British pound underperforms against all its major peers. Both Brent and WTI trade higher while gold is subtly below yesterday’s close.

Following the heavy sell-off that has stormed US stock markets recently benchmarks from Wall Street opened significantly higher on Thursday. USD moved higher despite a miss in the UoM sentiment reading yet the gains very quickly erased.

Investors were served with a pack of data from the US and Canadian economies in the afternoon. Figures concerning Canadian growth disappointed investors missing forecasts heavily. On the other hand, US PCE inflation beat economists estimates by coming in at 1.8% YoY.

German price growth accelerated in March underpinning the European Central Bank’s stance to begin policy normalization relatively soon. However, inflation missed the median estimate while a base effect stopped undermining annual price growth.

The Office for National Statistics confirmed the UK economy grew 1.4% in a year-over-year basis during the final three months of the past year. At the same time the current account gap shrank easily beating expectations suggesting the much  deeper deficit.

Digital currencies continued falling over the past hours with Bitcoin leading the losses following the announcement coming from Reddit as the company had decided to stop accepting Bitcoin payments.

As the date of Brexit scheduled for May next year is getting closer we may expect a more intense negotiations between UK and EU in the nearby future. The issue concerning border with Ireland is not only one that’s left to be solved and it surely is not the most important one.