Australia: The Australian Dollar continued to trade lower overnight following the sell off in equity markets on concerns over European sovereign debt.

Yesterday the RBA released the Minutes from its November Board meeting, saying that the decision to lift the cash rate was "finely balanced".

This has seen markets reduce any chance of a rate hike in December. The RBA minutes also noted that the medium-term economic outlook remained one of strengthening economic activity and gradually rising inflation.

Base metals fell sharply overnight, also weighing on the AUD, with zinc and lead down 8%, nickel and aluminium down 7%, while copper fell 6%.

Gold ended the session down $20 to be trading at US$1340.00 per ounce while oil fell 3% to US$82.00 a barrel. Today will see the
release of the Australian Q3 Wage Cost Index and the November skilled vacancies data.

We would expect the AUD to be under pressure following on from the overnight sell off.

Majors: As mentioned above equity markets were sold off heavily overnight, with the Dow down 1.6%, the S&P down 1.6% and the Nasdaq down 1.7%.

European markets also suffered losses with the DAX down 1.9% and the FTSE off 2.4%. Rumours yesterday that China would take further action to reduce inflationary pressure saw the Shanghai stock market fall 4%.

Throughout the European session the Irish debt concerns continued to weigh on the markets.

Positive European data releases were overshadowed overnight, with the Euro-zone CPI up 0.4% in October to be 1.9% year on year, while the German ZEW Survey rose to +1.8 in October from -7.2 previously.

In the US overnight industrial production came in flat for October following a 0.2% fall in September while the US NAHB Housing Market Index reported a rise to 16 from 15 in October.

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