Obama’s proposed legislation is digested

The markets became very flighty yesterday afternoon as President Obama called for the curbing of US banks riskier activity. This led to a scramble to safer currency shores but the markets could not seem to work out where to drop the anchor. The USD gained and then lost ground, the Yen had good gains as did sterling in the end and the commodity currencies softened.  To get to this point we saw an explosion of volatility in the markets.

This morning sterling has weakened on the back of retail sales data which came in at 0.3% against the forecasts for a 1.3% number. This is disappointing for the retail sector especially as it was reflective of the Christmas period- still sterling was not deeply affected and is still nicely poised on the prospects of an official exit from the recession in next weeks GDP data.

The euro has managed to hold above the 1.40 level and creep back above 1.41- it is certainly not out of the woods yet but the feeling is that Greece will be able to actively work on selling their debt and reducing their exposure. GBP/EUR has dropped towards 1.14 from 1.15 following the weaker retail data.