EUR

Latest IMT by GD - AshrafLaidi.com Staff

EURUSD hits $1.43 as the countdown to Thursdays the ECB decision remains under scrutiny. The Fed may have revealed some of its hawks, but nothing compares to the CPI validation for an ECB rate hike. US calendar is light on economic data with the exception of oil inventories from the DoE.

That report follows one day after the private weekly assessment from American Petroleum Institute (API), which registered a draw of 2.8M barrels against expectations of an inventory build -- the FIRST DRAW SINCE MARCH and also the largest volume of demand since early January. Crude popped up back above $108/brl in Asian electronic trade. Gold and silver retain a firm bid as well, in uncharted territory for the former above $1,455 and a 30-high for the latter on approach to $40/oz. On the MONETARY FRONT, sign of a growing rift inside the FOMC was evidenced in yesterdays minutes, which specifically, the minutes contained a new passage stating: "almost all meeting participants indicated that they saw no need to taper the pace of the Committee's purchases of Treasury securities." Benchmark 10-year treasury yields rose a few ticks within a basis point of 3.50% following the minutes' release.

In echo, St. Louis Fed President Bullard (non-voter) told the Wall Street Journal he would urge the FOMC to cut its $600B QE2 program short by $100B at the late-April meeting. Resiliency in Asia was boosted by strength of the Chinese market as the Shanghai Composite returned from an extended holiday with an assault on the psychologically critical 3,000 level - a 1% gain, all the more impressive considering the PBoC key 1-year rate tightening overnight. USDX deepens the break of the 3-yr trendline support and is increasingly vulnerable to being dragged towards the next key low of 74.23, last seen in Nov 2010.

Ashraf