Morning Update – 24/02/2017 – by Arjun Lakhanpal

Morning all.. Wall St recovered from a poor start with the S&P closing up marginally at the close. Asia had a softer session with the Nikkei falling 0.45% as USDJPY remained below 113.00. There seems to be some feeling that comments from YS Treasury sec Mnuchin suggested new policies may take more time to deal with.. USD majors traded in very tight ranges in the absence of meaningful economic data or market drivers. USD traded weaker across the G10 FX board on the margin with JPY the only exception to under-perform versus the USD compared to yesterday’s LDN close. Notable speaker commentary was also limited to RBA Governor Lowe, who said that while global economy is on a firmer footing, he would rather have lower AUD than higher. In terms of policy, Lowe said the current rates are consistent with meeting CPI target, and that the market pricing of rates remaining on hold in 2017 seems reasonable. On the data front, U.S. University of Michigan consumer sentiment release at 3pm LDN one to keep an eye on; we expect the sentiment index to rebound 0.5pt to 96.2 in the February final estimate, reflecting improvement among more timely measures of consumer confidence as well as the favourable stock market performance over the last two weeks. There is no notable data in Europe today.. Looks like being a quiet one.. Good luck.