What are the main events for today?

The European session today is pretty empty on the data front with no market moving releases on the agenda. The main highlight is the US Consumer Confidence report in the American session. We will also get the US Durable Goods Orders but it’s not a market moving release in general because it’s too volatile and gets revised often.

15:00 GMT/10:00 ET – US January Consumer Confidence

The US Consumer
Confidence is expected at 105.6 vs. 104.7 prior. Last month, consumer confidence dropped to 104.7 vs. 112.8 in
November.

Dana M. Peterson,
Chief Economist at The Conference Board said: “The recent rebound in consumer
confidence was not sustained in December as the Index dropped back to the middle
of the range that has prevailed over the past two years”.

“While weaker
consumer assessments of the present situation and expectations contributed to
the decline, the expectations component saw the sharpest drop. Consumer
views of current labour market conditions continued to improve,
consistent with recent jobs and unemployment data, but their assessment of
business conditions weakened.”

This might have
been just an outlier among lots of upbeat economic data. Overall, we are
still in the range that has prevailed over the past two years, and we
haven’t got any strong catalyst that could suggest a sudden weakening in the
economy.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at www.forexlive.com.