Summary:

  • Reserve Bank of Australia left interest rates unchanged

  • Cryptocurrencies fall under pressure

  • Data from the US and Canadian manufacturing sector scheduled for release in the afternoon

As investors played down doubts concerning the potential launch of a trade war an upbeat moods have returned to the stock markets. European equities continue to rise for the second day. NZD is outperforming all of its G10 peers while JPY struggles. Gold edges higher on the back of USD weakness. Oil traders await weekly API report on inventories.

The Swedish krona has found itself under renewed downward pressure following the newest remarks voiced by some Riksbank members including governor Ingves. Bear in mind that SEK investors have had many inputs to digest of late, however, the net fallout has not been supportive of the krona.

Taking a closer look at the cryptocurrency block one may notice that Ripple has been the most volatile recently but even so volatility has remained contained taking into account digital currency standards. The prime reason for a Ripple’s whipsaw were talks or actually rumours about possible adding the virtual currency to Coinbase.

European stock markets opened on Tuesday with a sizeable upside price gap as optimism has returned to the global stock markets. The Italian FTSE MIB managed to pare its post-election loss. The automobile companies lead the gains of the Euro Stoxx 600 index while the real estate stocks were the sole underperformers in the morning.

In line with expectations the Reserve Bank of Australia chose to leave all interest rates untouched sending pretty the same remarks with regard to the economy as well as the currency. Consequently, the Australian dollar did not respond too much, however, the data concerning retail sales for January and the calculation of net exports input to GDP growth disappointed to some extent.

Taking a look at the Tuesday’s economic calendar one can see a lack of top tier macro releases from the European economies. However, we will get some readings from the US and Canadian manufacturing sector in the afternoon as well as the weekly API report on oil inventories.