Weekly Market Update 20-06-2012

[Windsor02]

£/€
Range of the week: 1.2344 to 1.2463
Variance of the week on £10k=€119

Major news or data for the week so far:

The major topics this week have been the Greece elections & the rising bond yield levels in Spain. The Greeks elected a pro-bailout party & therefore have calmed down rumours that they were going to remove themselves from the Euro zone by challenging the austerity measure as set out by the Germans & the rest of the Euro zone.

This, however, has been eclipsed by the rising borrowing costs in Spain as Spanish 10 year bond yield went past 7% on Monday which has been prompting fears about how Madrid will cope financially. It’s important to note that Greece, Ireland & Portugal all sought bailouts shortly after their 10 year bond yields rose past 7%.

This is also occurring only two weeks after Spain asked for a 100 billion Euro loan to help its crippled banking sector to recover from the burst housing bubble in Spain.

However, fears have been somewhat alleviated as the Spanish had a successful bond sale yesterday with further successful bond sales expected tomorrow hopefully yielding between 1 & 2 billion Euros for the Spanish.

German Zew economic sentiment survey also came out yesterday considerably worse than expected (forecast 2.3 & came out -16.9)


£/$
Range of the week: 1.5636 to 1.5748
Variance of the week on £10k=$112

Major news or data for the week so far:

Much of the economic focus in the States fell on the Federal Reserve which started a 2 day monetary policy meeting in Washington yesterday. Expectations are high that the central bank will decide to continue its current easing policy. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to give a press conference today after the Fed concludes its meeting.

The US is primarily concerned at the moment with the presidential elections & this is currently dominating US news.


£/AUS
Range of the week: 1.5407 to 1.5556
Variance of the week on £10k=149 AUD

The AUD reserve bank minutes for June came out yesterday. The general message was that interest rates were unlikely to be cut unless forced to by external events such as a worsening crisis in Europe which could have a globally recessive effect. Also important to note that the Australians recently posted over 4% growth as Chinese demand is not slowing down as much as expected


£/NZD
Range of the week: 1.9699 to 1.9822
Variance of the week: on £10k= 123 NZD

No major news or data for the week so far


£/ZAR
Range of the week: 12.85 to 13.09
Variance of the week: on £10k= 2400 ZAR

No major news or data for the week so far


£/CAD
Range of the week: 1.5971 to 1.6080
Variance of the week: on £10k= 109 CAD

No major news or data for the week so far