Bell FX Currency Outlook:
Australia: The AUD continued to hold firm overnight despite weaker offshore equity markets and no progress from the Greek
political parties.

The AUD/USD is currently trading around the 1.0710 level while on the cross rates the AUD/EUR & AUD/GBP are trading slightly weaker from yesterday at 0.8150 & 0.6770, respectively.

Yesterday's release of the Australian retail sales data reported a fall of 0.1% weaker than the markets expectations for a rise of 0.1%. Also released yesterday were the ANZ job ads, which reported a rise of 6.0% for newspapers and internet ads for January from December, with total job advertisements up 0.7% from January 2011.

While the jobs ads numbers where positive there have been a number of announcements of the past few weeks on job losses across all industries.

Today the market will focus of the RBA Boards meeting, the first for 2012 and the majority of economists expect the RBA to cut its official cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.0%.

Majors: In the US overnight equity markets ended the session lower with the Dow down 0.3% to 12828, the Nasdaq ended down 0.3% to 2898 from yesterday's close. Overnight the markets focus was on the Greek political parties who are still yet to agree on a pre-condition which is expected to include a 20% cut to the minimum wage, some 15,000 public service layoffs and cuts to
retiree's pensions.

While this pre-condition sign off is required before receiving the further 130bn euro bail-out package, it seems that markets are not too concerned by the lack of commitment and clearly both French and German officials patience are wearing thin. On the data front the German Factory orders for December came in steady at +1.7% year on year, helped by foreign exports due to a weaker Euro.

Economic Calendar
07 FEB AU AIG Performance of Construction
AU RBA Cash Target
GE Industrial Production
US Consumer Credit