Risk-on move despite soft US data; UK MPs seek to take control of Brexit

Summary:

• US stocks look to bounce back despite soft data

• DE30: Airbus secures $35B deal in China

• Top 3 charts of the week: USDIDX, USDTRY and Oil.WTI

• Bitcoin’s volatility drop to nearly two-year low

• What next for GBP as UK parliament seeks to take control?

There’s green across the board for US stock markets which were already trading higher before receiving another boost not long after the opening bell with gains of almost 1% seen in most benchmarks. However, these gains have been pared somewhat into the European close and how they end tonight could be telling. On the data front there’s not too much by the way of market-moving releases to note, with the main figures coming from the US on both consumer confidence and the property sector. For the month of March US consumer confidence came in much worse than forecast with a reading of 124.1 vs 132.5 expected. Housing starts for February came in worse than expected at 11.6M vs 12.1M forecast, although a fair chunk of the miss can be explained by the prior being revised higher by 0.43M to now read 12.73M.

In Europe the DE30.cash has rallied up to its highest level of the week above the 11400 handle while Oil has also gained in a broad risk-on move. The latest fatal crash of the Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 aircraft caused a bulk of aviation regulators to ground machines. Moreover, the US aircraft manufacturer is operating in a challenging environment due to the Sino-US trade war. In turn, outlook for another major planemaker - Airbus (AIR.DE/AIR.FR) - began to improve. Today, the European company announced that it has secured $35 billion deal from China. The order consists of 300 planes total.

Our top 3 charts of the week focus on USDIDX, USDTRY and Oil.WTI and can be viewed in detail here.

Recent days have not been so rosy for major cryptocurrencies as they have experienced some declines. Moreover, Tuesday’s trading has also brought some losses so far. However, the scale of these drops could be described as slight. Apart from that, it is worth noting that Ethereum and Ripple have approached their key supports. According to CoinMarketCap, the capitalization of the whole cryptocurrency market stands around the $136.5 billion mark whereas the market capitalization of altcoins (ie. excluding Bitcoin) sits a notch below the $67 billion handle at press time. The CoinDesk website analyzed the Bitcoin’s performance in March, and it compared it to the previous months. What’s interesting, the largest cryptocurrency has experienced the lowest volatility (ie. the average daily trading range) since April 2017 this month (note the analysis was published yesterday). More precisely, the average difference between the Bitcoin’s opening and closing prices was $85 in the analyzed period of time. The CoinDesk’s report is not particularly surprising as major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, have not managed to show major price movements in March thus far.

The latest twist in the Brexit saga has seen the UK parliament vote in favour of giving themselves greater input into the process of leaving the EU with a series of indicative votes now expected to take place tomorrow. This paves the way for a different path to that plotted by PM May but it is worth pointing out that any suggestions made by the House of Commons won’t be legally binding and the outcome could in fact help May’s deal pass. GBPUSD has been in a fairly narrow range in recent months, but dips towards 1.30 have been bought. A golden cross printed a few weeks back but the market needs to make a clean break above 1.3380 before a sustained rally can occur.