Yen and Dollar Fell While Sterling Excelled

The Yen and the Dollar fell on Thursday, compensating some of the earlier session's gains, while sterling extended gains after the Bank of England kept its quantitative easing target unchanged.

A recovery in European stocks helped to buoy the Euro and perceived higher risk currencies, which fell sharply on Wednesday as optimism about the global economy's recovery prospects, waned and investors trimmed risk exposure.

European equities jumped by 1.1 %, breaking a five-session losing streak and pushing the yen lower after it surged broadly on Wednesday, hitting a five-month high against the USD.
Analysts noted, however, that the current moves are corrective and do not represent any fundamental shift in market sentiment.

Sterling outperformed meanwhile after the BoE left its asset buying programme at 125 billion pounds, just as most in the market had expected the central bank to expand the total by 25 billion pounds..

Sterling jumped by 1.2 % against the Dollar to $1.6255 , while the Euro lost 0.5 percent against the UK currency to 85.98 pence as the pound extended gains after the Bank of England policy decision. The news that it was not expanding quantitative easing came as the central bank left key interest rates unchanged at 0.5 percent, as widely expected.

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U.S. Markets: Trading capacity fell considerably ahead of the earnings period.

According to the latest forex updates, U.S. Markets are trading down by a little more than 1.5%, as investors wait for the earnings season to begin in full strangle mode.

The first major company that is due to report its earnings over the second quarter on Wednesday, and market partakers wait for the earnings result of Alcoa. TheLFB-Forex.com Trade Team said that the present earnings season is very important because it can justify or not the strong rally started in March, where the major U.S. indexes advanced as much as 40%.

More significantly, investors will focus on the banking sector earnings, to see if the “wonders” from the first quarter still have legs, and on the retail companies, to determine consumers’ activities over the previous quarter. Since consumer spending mostly drives the U.S. economy, the earnings reports are likely to have a significant influence in the financial market.

Over the last few days of trading, the market has been trading on light trading volume in the European and in the U.S. markets. Particularly, the last two days of trading in the cash market had been very light, especially in the European markets, where the U.K. FTSE moved only on half of the volume recorded over the last few weeks of trading.

The Dow Jones Index fell 144.27 points (1.73%) to 8,180.60, while the S&P 500 index declined 15.59 points (1.73%) to 883.13. Crude oil for July delivery was recently trading at $62.80 per barrel, lower by $1.20. Tuesday was the sixth repeated day in which oil fell down, time in which it lost almost 15%. Gold for July delivery was recently trading higher by $3.90 to $928.20. Gold managed to hold its value on Tuesday, even though crude oil headed lower.

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