A temporary ban on short selling financial stocks in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium was passed in late US trading, sending stocks and risk appetite higher. Posed by Esma, the EU market regulator earlier in the day, it helped spur a rally back into European and US stock markets. Esma believe their motives are pure as they say the recent trading of financial stocks has been nothing short of market abuse.

Injecting further confidence in the Eurozone was the big three ratings agency, which underlined that their AAA status for France remained in place despite the current rumours. The euro was on the bid slightly in the morning as a result but longer term questions still remain.

Gold pushed back from its new highs as investors generally exited safe haven trades of the USD, JPY and CHF. USDJPY got to within 5 pips of its post WWII lows of 76.25, this would of definitely been breached had it not been for the recent Japanese intervention

So despite the sudden unwind of CHF trades yesterday which saw the Swiss currency lose in the region of 5% against the majors, policy makers are still left scratching their heads about its relative long term strength. Yesterday did see SNB vice president Thomas Jordan say that they might actually consider the drastic measure of pegging the currency to the euro. The fine print reveals it is perfectly legal to influence the exchange rate as long as it is consistent with the SNB’s mandate of long term price stability. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

US initial jobless were slightly better than expected yesterday, this is more a precursor to the big jobs data of non-farm payrolls for next month but does provide a glimmer of positive news for the US. Today’s front line data sees US retail sales out in the afternoon, with the consensus for a 0.4% positive reading

Latest exchange rates at time of writing