Morning Update – 05/02/15 – 07:25:23

Morning all.. A Wall St rally faded fast after the ECB last night announced the suspension of GGB eligibility in Euro system refi operations from February 11th. They previously allowed Greek government debt to be used as collateral under a waiver as although its sub-IG, the country has been in a program. This basically means the majority of Greek bank funding shifts to the (emergency) ELA which the ECB reviews every two weeks. This was going to happen at the end of the month but the fact that the ECB have done this now is a surprise and means that they no longer see Greece as being part of an approved program. In terms of market reaction yesterday, in the minutes prior to the ECB/Greece story hitting the headlines, the S&P 500 was trading +0.24% on the day, 10y Treasuries generally flat at 1.81%, CDX IG at 66.5 and the Euro a touch lower at $1.145. In the short time between the headlines being released and markets closing, the S&P dropped some 0.6% to close the day at -0.42%, 10y Treasuries rallied 6bps into 1.75%, CDX IG widened 3bps and the Euro weakened nearly 1% to $1.1350. This will be the focus again this morning.. Chinese stocks rallied early after the RRR cut from the PBOC but this too faded towards the close. Nikkei closed down a,ost 1%. Back to oil markets yesterday, both Brent (-6.48%) and WTI (-8.67%) finished lower yesterday to trade at $54.16/bbl and $48.45/bbl respectively – more or less reversing Tuesday’s gains and are lower again this morning.. USD/JPY and the JPY complex endeavored to push lower, especially after demand at the Tokyo fix was sated. USD/JPY fell from 117.35 to 117.02, weighed down by the 1%+ push down in the Nikkei and lower US yields on risk-off sentiment following the ECB announcement on Greek debt. From a NY close of 1.802%, the yield on US Tsy 10s fell to 1.735% by the Tokyo open and remains there. EUR/USD got off to a fiery start in Asia after the ECB announcement late in the US day that they were ending the ratings waiver for Greek debt. EUR/USD (and the EUR complex) literally collapsed from 1.1425 to 1.1347 at the Asia open and on to 1.1304 before bids returned. EUR was already under pressure in US trading on renewed weakness in NYMEX crude. From the low, EUR/USD slowly recovered to 1.1363. This morning The European Commission will unveil its winter forecasts today. We expect a significant downward revision to inflation and a higher deficit figure while the GDP growth number should remain unchanged. We also have UK House prices from Halifax, German Construction PMI, Swedish Industrial Production, Italian Industrial Production and the BoE rate decision. Good luck.