Morning Update – 12/10/2017 – by Arjun Lakhanpal

Morning all.. Another positive and record close on Wall St which saw the S&P rise 0.18% in a relatively calm session as we wait for the busy part of the week to unfold. It was quiet in Asia as well but again the Nikkei finished in the green; up 0.37% and FX markets saw a rather weaker USD through the session with EUR and GBP breaking NY highs. USDJPY was restricted to a tight range. Japanese stocks extended gains, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Average trading at the highest level since 1996. Equities also rose in South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong. Treasuries were steady after the release of the Fed minutes. Investors still expect borrowing costs to rise this year, with market-implied odds of a U.S. rate hike by year-end remaining at about 77 percent. The euro remains on course for a strong week as the immediate threat of Spain’s breakup over Catalonia’s independence bid receded. However we have a host of ECB speakers today, including Draghi. Fed officials debated hard last month over whether forces holding inflation down were persistent or temporary, with several policy makers looking for stronger evidence of price gains before supporting a third interest-rate increase this year. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.6 percent to $50.98 a barrel after rising 0.8 percent on Wednesday..Gold was up 0.3 percent to $1,295.20 an ounce, extending this week’s advance. This morning We get French CPI (final look), Swedish CPI and EU Industrial Production.. We get the start of some important US data for this week later with US PPI.. Good luck