Regular readers will know I have a soft spot for space, stars, asteroids, eclipses and the like. I do also like space craft and I am not someone who generally complains about the amount of money spent on space exploration. However I have been reading an article that explains how scientists claim to have worked out when the first stars began to shine. For one professor this was his lifes work. The verdict? 250-350 million years ago. Now firstly, I’m not sure how that is supposed to help anyone, second will we really know if that is correct and third, excuse my desire for a little more accuracy but that is a spread of 100 million years.
A weekend of sport ahead of us which is just as well because the weather looks a little ropey. Tomorrow we have Wales/Denmark, you’d think with a name like Evans I would be supporting Wales but I’d quite like to see Denmark do well after the ordeal they went through with Ericsson earlier in the tournament. Italy play Austria, you will recall I backed Italy as one of the most likely to do well, so sorry Austria but I’ll be giving a big ‘evviva’ to Italy.
On Sunday we have Netherlands (thank you for clearing up the use of Holland by the way) / Czech Republic and then Belgium/Portugal. That could be a cracker, although at this stage of the competition even the dullest of matches has a decent degree of excitement about it.
Finally, the British Lions face Japan in rugby. I’m not a massive rugby fan but I don’t mind the odd international match. I have to say though if you showed me a picture of the Japanese team I’m not sure I’d have guessed it was Japan. Probably not allowed to say that these days.
USD – A bout of improved risk sentiment pushed US equities higher, indeed some indices hit record highs yesterday . The dollar has been reasonably calm, we do have the PCE deflator figure this afternoon, one of the Feds favourite inflation indicators which could bring some excitement given the focus on inflation right now, we also have several Fed officials speaking but we’ve had little reaction so far to most of the comments made by their colleagues at the Fed this week.
EUR – Who would want to be a EURUSD trader? The market has traded pretty much a 10 pip range for most of the night and we are a mere 10 pips higher than we were this time yesterday morning. EU leaders meeting brought some agreements on Turkey but decided against a summit with Russia.
GBP – All eyes were on BoE yesterday. The decision s were in line with expectations, GBP fell on the news it was only Haldane who wanted a reduction in QE, there had been some thinking there would be more than one dissenter. Haldane is leaving and there appears to be no one to take over his somewhat hawkish stance. BoE were a little upbeat but they said little to get the market believing they will need to act any time soon. GBPUSD dropped almost 100 pips below 1.3900, it is now 1.3915, while EURGBP traded back up to almost 0.8600 (GBPEUR 1.1630) before settling back to the 0.8580 (1.1655) area.
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