Summary:

• Equities in Europe post modest gains on Wednesday morning, Spanish IBEX surges

• Japanese yen and Swiss franc remain under pressure

• Brent trades flat ahead of DOE report release

A positive developments in the Trade Wars theme support the positive sentiment towards the equity market. However, advances in Europe are partially limited by the stronger euro. While most of the European stock markets post modest gains in the morning the Spanish IBEX surges. Australian dollar is the top performing G10 currency on the back of a solid GDP report. On the other hand, “safer” currencies like JPY and CHF are the biggest laggards. Gold trades at minor discount while Brent trades flat.

A debate regarding the future of digital currencies is not something new, and from time to time we are offered new hunches and forecasts (often based on nothing to be honest). This time is another one coming from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse who told CNBC on Tuesday that Bitcoin is unlikely to be the catch-all solution for people in terms of being a global currency.

The euro is gaining ground and this is being felt across European equity markets. Let us remind that we were offered some revelations on Tuesday that the ECB could signal an end of its bond buying programme as soon as next week, nevertheless do notice that this is basically already priced in.

Over the past hours commodity-related currencies drew most of attention, and their gains were not random as we were offered two major topics shaking them. Australian dollar is gaining after a solid GDP release for the first three months of the year.

It looks that Wednesday will be dominated by commodities and related currencies given what we’ve got in the calendar today. On top of that, having the ECB meeting scheduled for next week it seems to reasonable to put more emphasis on ECB speakers.