Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar has opened trading around the USD0.9920 level after trading up to USD0.9990 overnight.

Australia: Some better data out of the US, and a stronger Spanish bond auction saw markets react positively; for the day at least. The AUD continues to perform well on the cross rates with the AUD/EUR and AUD/GBP trading around the EUR0.7620 and GBP0.6400 levels respectively.

Base metals were mixed overnight with copper flat, nickel up 2.9% and zinc down 0.3%. Gold continues to trade lower down 0.7% overnight to USD1,573 an ounce while oil fell 1.5% to USD93.55 a barrel.

There is no local data due for release today and since the AUD losses over the past week have been extreme, it may see some buying opportunity and as a result a short term bounce.

Majors: In the US overnight some better than expected data saw equity markets finish positive with the DOW up 45 points to finish at 11,868. The US jobless claims data for last week came in down 19k to 366k better than the markets forecast of 390k.

Also released overnight was the Philadelphia Fed Survey which reported a rise to 10.3 in December, with the new orders component lifting to 47.6 from 39.8 well above the long term trend of 33.6.The Empire manufacturing data also reported gains to 9.5 to December, showing signs of continued growth for the US in 2012.

In Europe, the Spanish bond auction went well selling 6.03bn well above the Treasury target of 3.5bn. Also helping was the 10 year bond yield for Spain and Italy both falling to 5.43% and 6.57% respectively.

Equity markets in the UK and Europe all finished in the black following positive bond auctions. On the data front the Eurozone manufacturing PMI reported a rise to 46.9 in December from 46.4 in November.

Economic Calendar
16 DEC EU Euro-zone Trade Balance OCT
US CPI NOV