Stocks Rebound On Russia's Syria Proposal

The USD weakened overnight with The Dollar Index dipping back below 82 level while US stocks extended recovery with the DOW back above 15000 level to close at 15063.12. Regarding the situation in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said after meeting with Syrian officials in Moscow that, "if the establishment of international control of chemical weapons in the country will help avoid military strikes, we will immediately start working with Damascus." US President Obama responded saying that it's "certainly a positive development" for Russians and Syrians to deal with chemical weapons and pledged to "absolutely" put off a punitive strike if Syrian leader Assad gave up the chemical weapons. Meanwhile, Obama said that "if we can exhaust these diplomatic efforts and come up with a formula that gives the international community a verifiable, enforceable mechanism to deal with these chemical weapons in Syria, then I'm all for it."

The BoJ minutes for August meeting noted that urged the government to, "steadily promote steps to achieve fiscal consolidation." And, "many members said it was important to maintain credibility of fiscal management to keep interest rates stable". Also, one member warned that, "if the government's efforts towards restoring fiscal health weaken ... long-term interest rates may rise on eroding market confidence in Japanese government bonds and hurt the effect of the central bank's policies."

Asian equities are also broadly higher today and positive sentiments lifted the Aussie. Positive outlook for China's economy also helped to boost the Aussie. Besides, Australian NAB business confidence improved markedly to 6 in August, up from -3 in July. Technically, while commodity currencies are generally firm against other major currencies, the Aussie and the Kiwi are out-performing the Canadian dollar for the moment.

Elsewhere, UK RICS house price balance improved further to 40 in August and beat expectation of 38. The Japan tertiary industry index dropped -0.4% mom in July. Data from China will be a focus today with industrial production, fixed assets investments, and retail sales featured. Canada will also release housing starts today.