Summary:

• Turkish lira remains under pressure losing to both, EUR and USD

• European stocks try to pare morning weakness

• CAD waits for an important data pack (1:30 pm BST)

Early European trading on Friday was marked by the weakness of the major stock benchmarks from the region. However, as the time passed losses were partially erased yet the Italian FTSE MIB remains significantly lower. New Zealand dollar is advancing against all its major peers while the British pound and Norwegian krone are the biggest underperformer. Precious metals trade lower while oil posts minor gains. Nickel is top mover among industrial metals.

Each news regarding cryptocurrency taxation deserves more attention this is especially true as we are living in the world that many regulators aim to burden cryptocurrency traders with additional taxes. However, there are some positive revelations from some to time and such news has recently came from Thailand.

Major European stock markets opened a notch lower on Friday with the French CAC 40 being the biggest underperformer. Stock indices from the Eastern Europe seem to outperform their Western peers in the first minutes of Friday’s trade. Telecoms are the biggest underperformers among European companies while financials and insurers are the top gainers.

Trade threads undoubtedly dominated Asian trading hours as China informed that it had reportedly offered US President Trump a package of proposed purchases of US goods aimed at scaling back the US trade deficit with China by roughly $200 billion a year. According to US officials familiar with the offer it was made during US-China trade talks in Washington.

Canadian dollar took a hit overnight after one of the US officials from the NAFTA negotiation team said that Canada, US and Mexico are “nowhere near close to a deal”. CAD will probably remain in the spotlight today as two major readings from the Canadian economy are scheduled for the early afternoon.