Daily Forex Commentary

Majors: Japanese economic growth data beat expectations of an increase in year to date GDP to around 3.5% coming in at a whopping 4.6% during Q4 2009. The weak Yen helped exports and with improvements in global demand mainly led by China also playing a big role growth in the region beat economist forecasts. Despite the positive news the JPY weakened against the USD trading to 90.20 in Asian trade as many analysts expect the rise in GDP to be relatively short lived. With little in the way of offshore economic data for direction overnight it emerged that the Greece finance ministry had entered into interest rate swaps as a means to defer interest payments by several years, a common practice however one that cast some doubt as to the true debt burden. The news hit risk appetite with EUR/USD trading to a low of 1.3580 on two occasions, down from its overnight peak around 1.3635. With the U.S scheduled back from a long weekend this evening and more comments from EU officials likely to emerge the volatility is expected to increase once again as EUR/USD continues to edge closer to 1.35.