Morning Update – 24/11/15 – 07:55:10

Morning all.. Wall St closed slightly lower but it was a quiet session. Asia also has been quiet as we head into the US Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. Nikkei was up 0.23% but HK at last glance was moving lower on the day. Commodity names in particular have led the bulk of bourses lower again.  There was plenty of white noise for markets to consider yesterday. More deep losses in metal markets, big volatile swings for Oil, credit market fragility tested again by Vodafone pulling its latest bond offering (despite sweetening the deal with step-up language), the biggest pharma acquisition ever with Pfizer acquiring Allergan, surprisingly hawkish ECB chatter and better than expected European PMI’s but some softish US data. Yelleen said little in her comments. Japan reopened a touch higher after Japan’s Nikkei flash manufacturing PMI rose 0.4pts to 52.8. Commodity markets are a bit more mixed this morning (Oil posting a modest half a percent gain) while commodity currencies have rebounded generally. Meanwhile late last night the US issued a global travel alert citing ‘increased terrorist threats’ and Belgium has extended its lockdown in Brussels for another day. FX has been quiet but EUR buying as London walks in. USDJPY looking soft and close to session lows. AUD a little higher as the dollar slides. Much of the focus today will be on two important data releases in the US. Firstly, the advance goods trade balance reading for October is expected to show a modest widening in the deficit, reflecting a drag from net exports which would be consistent with recent trends in the export and import components of the manufacturing ISM survey. Released at the same time will be the second reading for Q3 GDP. We also have French Business and Manufacturing confidence and German IFO data this morning.. Good luck.