This week contains the first Friday on the Month and that means the US non-farm payrolls release, after the run of poor US data this month’s release will be even more important than usual, and along with manufacturing data could dictate the tone of US markets thus month.

Despite the promise of large tax rises, and government spending cuts leading to job cuts, all it takes is a little bit of sunshine and football to make the UK consumer to forget about the coming troubles and to open their wallets.

The Euro made some solid gains yesterday against the USD breaking the 1.30 barrier as the markets digest the results of the European bank stress tests on Friday. Initial views were sceptical and clarification is still needed on the exposure of Deutsche Bank to the eurozone sovereign debt so until...

Given the lack of market credibitility placed on the EU bank stress tests, it is perhaps unsurprising that the market reaction to their publication on friday evening has been largely neutral thus far. There was little fallout for currencies from the release of the much-awaited stress tests on 91 European banks.

After a strong set of retail sales figures gave Sterling a boost yesterday, markets have much to get their teeth into today in determining whether recent indications of a tentative recovery have any legs to them.

It is a sign of how tentative the recovery in the markets is that an uncontroversial statement from the head of the US Federal Reserve, in a testimony to Congress, that the US recovery ‘remains unusually uncertain’ can move risk appetite and send the Dollar higher.

BP have just managed to get one PR disaster under control in the Gulf of Mexico, as another pops up with the Americans trying to implicate them in the release of the very resilient Ablesbaset al-Megrahi.

Risk appetite, along with the US dollar, took a dip on Friday as some poor corporate earnings reports and a extremely weak consumer confidence survey, damaged optimism. The consumer confidence figures fell to a level last seen in the nadir of the credit crunch in August 2009, and coming after...

The Dollar has suffered over the last couple of days as a dovish set of FOMC minutes, which downgraded prospects for both growth and inflation, has been compounded by some weaker than expected data, including a Empire manufacturing survey which disappointed.

Yesterday saw evidence that the UK economic recovery is beginning to feed through into the labour market. Claimant count unemployment fell for the fifth month in a row and, even though the 20,800 June decline was the smallest of any month this year, the claimant count is now at its...