So far, “the Super Thursday” disappoints as European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi said exactly what market participants expected. “The key ECB interest rates remain at their present levels for an extended period of time and well past the horizon of the net asset purchases”. A key point here is the omission of “lower” when compared to the prior statement which read “at their present levels or lower”. This is exactly what we anticipated in our “Ahead of the ECB: is euro prone to tumble?” post yesterday.
Now all eyes focus on UK election which is underway and will continue through to 22:00pm. Since Theresa May called snap elections in April the GBP market has focus entirely on this issue. The short campaign has been interrupted by 2 terror attacks and while the Tories saw their support dwindle, they are still projected to win. Here we gathered all the key info a trader should be equipped with before the first voting results.
Of six polls published on Wednesday, two showed the Conservatives widening their lead over Labour, two showed a narrowing and two were unchanged. They mostly suggested that Theresa May would increase the small majority.
Another disappointment, if it comes to market volatility, was testimony of ex FBI director James Comey before the Senate. Comey was fired by Trump earlier this year and has been an outspoken critic of the US president. Some of the highlights from his testimony are available here. Whilst Gold saw some strong selling ahead of the testimony the market has been quiet during the testimony.
Asian session was full of macroeconomic releases that had various impact on the market. In Japan a final release of the GDP for the first quarter showed annualized growth at just 1%, far below expectations of 2.4%.