The first half of the day has passed quite calmly until the BoE decision which has brought about a surge of the pound. Besides, the SNB decided to leave rates on hold but made a noteworthy reference to the recent performance of the Swiss franc.

As far as the Swiss central bank is concerned it’s worth stressing that it admitted that “significant overvaluation of the CHF has been reduced”. Even as that kind of remarks could have been seen as a small nod to a possible change in rhetoric, any bullish hopes evaporated following Thomas Jordan press conference. He repeated the CHF still remains overvalued while the SNB held its pledge to intervene on the FX market if necessary. Moreover, the SNB slashed its GDP forecast for 2017 from 1.5% to just under 1%. In turn, inflation projections were modestly revised up predominantly owing to the franc depreciation against the euro. All in all, the CHF has been unimpressed so far losing slightly to the single currency.

The Bank of England left interest rates as well as its bond buying program on hold which was in line with market expectations. Nevertheless, there were some hints suggesting increasingly limited tolerance for higher inflation. As a result, the pound has rallied immediately, a very short-lived decline has taken place though.

The European equity markets have started the day lower taking a leaf out of Asian investors’ book. It’s worth underlining that the record close seen across the US indices yesterday has been shrugged off so far. Let us also recall that the euro seems to be recoup its yesterday’s losses made in the aftermath of an increase of the US dollar. In turn, the latter gathered momentum following revelations from the White House as reportedly some discussions about tax cuts took place.

Getting back to the Asian session, there was a bunch of the macro releases. Industrial output growth slipped to 6% in August from already disappointing 6.4% in July, retail sales was down from 10.4% to 10.1% and urban investments increased by 7.8%, 0.5pp lower than in July – in all cases these were major misses and we need to stress one thing here: it’s not a big deal to see annual growth in output down 0.6pp from the consensus, especially at a level of 6% but in China the data looks always so smooth that there is a belief the statistical office undertakes efforts to present it that way.

The cryptocurrency market has experienced wild volatility of late mainly on the back of adverse stories coming from China. Moreover, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase has also weighed in on that topic calling it “a fraud” being even “worse than tulip bulbs”. The Bitcoin price is declining another 2% and a subsequent downbeat story from Africa might be not reassuring at all.

Having the central bank meetings already behind, focus should turn on the US and the CPI reading. Besides, there are two speeches of central bankers from ECB.