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* Currencies range trade... * With a bias to buy dollars... * Recession deepens in Eurozone... * India cuts rates... ** A New Year! Good day... Happy New Year! And a Happy Friday to one and all! A Fantastico Friday, I bet it will be, as most people are still on "holiday". I hope your New Year's celebration went well, mine did, spent with good friends, after a simply scrumptious dinner! Yesterday, we spent the day with friends again, as good friend Rick, had everyone and their brother to his new house to celebrate the New Year... I'm worn out! Good thing this is a quick shot work day, and then onto the weekend, because I'm spent! Well, enough of all that! The currencies traded in a very tight range on Wednesday, and I expect more of that today. The bias has been to buy dollars going into the year-end, and it looks as though that might be the case today, as there's been no data to speak of in the U.S., while the Eurozone printed a very weak manufacturing index report, indicating that the Eurozone's recession is deepening. Of course if we compared apples to apples the bias would be to buy euros, but since there hasn't been any "real" economic data in a couple of days from the U.S. this report from the Eurozone gets all the attention....

* Currency markets stabilize (for now)... * Data packed holiday shortened week... * China cuts rates... * Indian rupee falls... ** Currency markets stabilize... Good day...The dollar settled in at the slightly higher levels it reached Friday morning and is trading in a narrow range heading into a holiday shortened week. Trade desks across the globe will be mostly staffed by the backups as the big bosses take Christmas week off. Volume will likely be lighter, which can sometimes lead to an increase in volatility. The data calendar is empty today, but chock full tomorrow and Christmas eve. Markets will be closed on Christmas day, and most will be closed again on the day following Christmas (known as boxing day). GDP, Personal Consumption, U of Michigan consume confidence, New Home Sales, Existing Home sales, House price index, Richmond Fed Man. Index, and ABC Consumer confidence numbers will all be released tomorrow. On Christmas eve the US will release MBA Mortgage applications, Personal Income, Personal Spending, PCE deflator, Durable Goods orders, and the weekly jobs numbers will all be released. I told you we will be packing in a weeks worth of data in the next two days!!...

* Budget gap to approach $500 billion... * Deficits lead to record borrowing by the US... * Commodity currencies take divergent paths... * India raises rates... ** Budget gap to approach $500 billion... Good day... The currency markets were mostly flat yesterday with all of the majors stuck in fairly tight trading ranges. With no economic data released, the trading desks were mostly dead. The story which dominated the screens yesterday was the announcement of a record $490 billion US budget gap. The Bush administration said the US budget deficit will widen to a record next year, leaving a deep budget hole. The bigger shortfall reflects dwindling tax receipts because of the US economic slowdown, the cost of the $168 billion economic stimulus package and spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The shortfall reflects a deterioration of the budget over the past seven years. Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001. The budget worsened almost immediately, because of recession, the Sept 11 attacks, the beginning of the war in Afghanistan and, later, the war in Iraq....

* Dollar receives some stimulus... * G8 to support $ over the weekend... * India surprises with a rate increase... * BOJ likely to keep rates unchanged... **Dollar receives some stimulus..... Good day... We had a pretty calm day in the markets yesterday as the dollar drifted lower vs. most of the major currencies. But when the Europeans picked up the trading overnight they all but wiped out any advances the currencies had made and the dollar is now sitting slightly higher than it was trading at this time yesterday morning. But I will get to that later; let me start this morning's Pfennig off with some comments Chuck left me on the markets as he signed off his computer last night: "OK... So quite a few of you liked my conspiracy theories yesterday, and even a few had one of their own! This whole mess of Bernanke and Paulson finally sitting up and taking notice in June is just too much for me. I think there's got to be a story here that we don't know about... Yet!...