Risk appetite continues today with Nikkei trading up 2% at the time of writing. That follows strength in US where DJIA closed up 42.67 pts or 0.24% at 18096.27, at highest since last July. WTI crude oil also finally resumed recent rally and breaches 44 handle in Asian session. In the currency markets, Canadian dollar is leading other commodity currencies higher for the week. Meanwhile, Yen, Swiss Franc and Dollar are the weakest so far. But it should be noted that Euro is clearly lower against Dollar since yesterday as markets await ECB meeting.
ECB is widely expected to keep monetary policies unchanged today, including the massive EUR 1.5T quantitative easing program. There are some criticisms that as ECB has already dipped into negative rates and QE, the marginal effect of any additional easing would be limited. And some economists noted that the confidence boost from the stimulus has been minimal so far. ECB president Mario Draghi will be facing relevant questions in the post meeting confidence, including his position on so called "helicopter money".
In UK, BoE policy maker Ian McCafferty signaled that he could be ready to vote for rate hike again if there is proof of turnaround in price pressures. He noted that "Although the pick-up in wages as the labor market has tightened appears to have been interrupted by current low inflation, once CPI inflation starts to rise, behavior is likely to revert, and wage inflation may rise surprisingly quickly in response." And, "if headline inflation were to pick up, or if we were confident that such a pickup was imminent, the speed with which wage growth responded would be key to the validation of my diagnosis and the outlook for monetary policy."
Elsewhere, Australia NAB business confidence dropped to 4 in Q1. Swiss trade balance, UK retail sales and public sector net borrowing will be featured in European session. US will release jobless claims, Philly Fed survey, house price index and leading indicators.