The US dollar has begun the day quite well, it has lost some of its steam though even as the data from the UK and the euro area missed forecasts. Firstly, the final reading of UK’s GDP for Q2 came in at 1.5% and missed the consensus at 1.7%. The pound slumped immediately and it’s currently trading 0.45% lower against the greenback. On top of that, the Swedish krone is the worst performing currency in the G10 basket after the report that the incumbent head of Riksbank Stefan Ingves will hold his post for the next 5 years. It means that ultra-loose monetary policy might stay unchanged for longer, the SEK is down 0.55% against the US dollar.

The economic outlook across the euro area seems to be uninterruptedly sturdy, one of the core element – inflation growth – remains sub-par though. Consumer prices remained unchanged at 1.5% yoy in September but fell short of the estimate at 1.6% yoy. Moreover, the core measure held onto 1.1% yoy registered in August and failed the consensus at 1.2% yoy as well. As a result, the euro marked a slight decline but recovered quite quickly.

Although, the European stock markets have opened higher, the Spanish index (SPA35) has plunged at the opening as investors are taking out their money ahead of the Catalan referendum scheduled on Sunday. We sketched out our insight into this event earlier this week you can find it under this link. Right now let’s take a closer look into the German DE30.

As far as the Asian session is concerned, we got an avalanche data from the Japanese economy which was in line with expectations more or less. By and large, the Japanese economy seems to be still a long way off from a marked improvement in terms of inflation. Thus, the USDJPY should be still mostly driven by the US data and the US 10Y yield which seems to be among key drivers for the pair.

Bitcoin got another nasty report to digest this time from South Korea which seemed to take a leaf out of China’s book and proclaimed that all initial coin offerings (ICOs) would be banned in the country. One of the reason why the price has been quite calm thus far might be that South Korea hasn’t prohibited cryptocurrency exchanges, a move which China undertook.