The Thursday session starts out with a fairly light amount of economic announcements coming out of Europe, with the Spanish CPI number coming out, but probably not having much impact. There is European Industrial Production numbers coming out, which of course could move the markets a bit but at the end of the day any rally in the Euro should more than likely offer selling opportunity.
The larger amount of economic information coming out during the day comes from the United States, starting off with Core Retail Sales coming out month over month, allowing for a print of 0.3%. This of course will have an effect on the stock markets in the United States which all of course look very supported anyways. The next announcement is Retail Sales month over month, expected to be 0.6%. Because of this, we think that it is going to be a big day in the stock market because of course retail sales will have an effect on company earnings. Lastly, there is the Michigan Consumer Cinnamon numbers, anticipated to be 83.34 the month. Ultimately though, we believe that the stock markets in the United States a fairly well supported, so therefore we think it’s only a matter of time before they go higher.
We have a keen interest in buying calls in the S&P 500, especially if the US economic numbers are strong. The 2010 level will offer a bit of resistance though, so we think this is more or less going to be a short-term opportunity. We also have a keen interest in buying the US dollar overall, and believe buying puts in the GBP/USD pair and the EUR/USD pair on rallies will be the way to go going forward for the session. Beyond that though, we feel that a lot of the markets might be fairly quiet for the Thursday session.
