Here are the bullet point of events in the past few days:

Here are the bullet point of events in the past few days:

 

1. US Fed kept their stance on QE and acknowledged economic improvements in housing and employment. Bernanke is looking for sustained improvements in labor market and around 2% inflation for the Fed to adjust pace of QE or to think about exit points.

2. Cyprus continues to search for a deal to avert economic and banking crisis.

3. US weekly initial jobless claims at 336k and continuing claims at 3053k both around expectations and trending lower on average over the past few months.

4. China HSBC preliminary PMI rose to 51.7 showing slight economic expansion.

5. Euro zone PMI all lower from Germany to France showing continuing economic contraction.

6. Japan equity market rides to recent highs as bets are on for more bond buying programs from the new BOJ governor.

 

We expect industrial precious metals to trade lower on global economic uncertainty while gold trades sideways on possible banking crisis contagion in EU. All the actions are in FX and Equities as commodity volumes have been lower in recent weeks.