Good Morning Traders!
It is Thursday 29th of December, here are some things to look out for ahead of today's session.
Sentiment:
After performing poorly on Tuesday and Wednesday, the yen led a group of ten currency gains. The USD/JPY exchange rate fell as much as 0.7% to 133.47, the most in more than a week.
The United States and Italy have joined an increasing number of countries requiring COVID tests for Chinese travelers, as concerns grow about the risk of new variants emerging from the country of 1.4 billion.
COVID outbreaks have peaked in Beijing, Tianjin, and Chengdu, but the situation in Shanghai, Chongqing, Anhui, Hubei, and Hunan remains critical, according to China's top epidemiologist, wu Zunyou, in a briefing.
Even after suffering a series of battlefield setbacks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Moscow will not enter into peace talks with Ukraine.
The Bank of Japan announced two more rounds of unscheduled bond purchases, fighting traders' betting that it will relax its yield-curve control policy further.
Docket:
8:30 AM ET
US Initial Jobless Claims - Median Forecast 225K | Prior 216 K | Range 240K/200K
US Continued Jobless Claims - Median Forecast 1.69M | Prior 1.672M
11:00 AM ET
US Weekly EIA Inventories
Crude Inventories - Median Forecast -1.2M | Prior -5.894M
11:30 AM ET
US sells $45 bln 4-Week Bills
1:00 PM ET
US sells 35 bln 7-Year Notes
