Morning Update – 04/01/2017 – by Arjun Lakhanpal

Morning all..Wall St got off to a solid start closing up 0.85% and Asia followed with the Nikkei up a punchy 2.5% to start the year off in style. This and the positive risk sentiment took USDJPY back up above 118.00. Kuroda: economy at critical point to end deflation; BoJ will continue easing program; more confident will make progress this year on ending deflation. Solid data also helping the Nikkei rally as Japan Dec Mfg PMI beats: 52.4 vs 51.9 prelim (51.3 prev); fastest pace of Mfg activity expansion since Dec ‘15; above 50 for 4th consecutive month. Elsewhere the dollar was rather quiet with EUR stuck close to 1.0400. The pound also little changed but we did see Departing UK Ambassador to EU Ivan Rogers criticising muddled thinking over Brexit in resignation letter saying negotiating skills and experience are in short supply. US 10yr yield was little changed at 2.2465% and oil was marginally higher. Later this evening (7pm LDN), we will be watching the Dec FOMC meeting minutes release. In their post-meeting statement, the committee said it hoped to see “some” additional gains in the labour market – implying limited scope for further improvement. This morning we get French Consumer confidence, Spanish unemployment and services PMI from Spain, France, Germany and the EU. Later we get UK services PMI and EU CPI data..Good luck.