Summary:

• NOK and NZD have been the largest movers within G10 thus far
• European stock markets remain on the sidelines despite impressive gains in Asia
• Bitcoin (BTCUSD on xStation5) has held its bullish momentum after a launch of futures at CBOE

Volatility across the FX market has been quite huge given that Mondays do not tend to bring livelier moves. The biggest movers have been NOK and NZD as of yet as the former plunged following a disappointing inflation report while the latter gained substantially due to the appointment of a new governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. At the time of writing the NOK is falling against the greenback as much as 1.1% (oil prices are flat) whereas the NZD is rising almost 1%. On top of that, it’s worth mentioning the Asian session which brought fairly impressive gains following Wall Street (all three indices ended the Friday’s session higher).

Beginning of a new trading week brought a continuation of optimism on global stock markets. The Asian benchmarks closed with decent gains which supports sentiment at the start of the European session. Investors in Asia reacted to the US labour report released on Friday, but market participants should focus on central banks, including Fed, this week. Moreover, the US Congress will be working on the joint tax bill as the reform is expected to be implemented before Christmas. Thus, signals from Washington should also affect moods on Wall Street and other equity markets. As for now key European equity markets are treading water except the British FTSE100 being up over 0.6%.

A rush from the US exchanges to start offering Bitcoin futures was seen as a major step in the currency adoption that was supposed to stabilize the market and make it more mature. The first trading day brought just the opposite as the Bitcoin future price surged much more impressively compared to the Bitcoin spot. Besides, one of the more intriguing stories around Bitcoin as of late is the news that the Bulgarian government seats on a pile of more than 200 thousand coins and a shocking move to the Bitcoin from South Korean authorities which banned all trading on Bitcoin derivatives last week.

Monday is going to be a calm day as far as the economic calendar is concerned. The JOLTs Job Openings report from the US is the only important figure for traders in today’s agenda. However, the whole week should be far more interesting as 3 major central banks are scheduled to hold their meetings and we get a string of crucial data from the US and UK economy.