Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar opens today's trading in the mid 1.0500's recovering from a relatively quiet session Friday night.

Australia: The local unit continues its firm tone of recent days as equity markets both in Europe and the United States showed small gains on Friday.

The volatility index for US equities continues to retreat and is now at its lowest point since June 2007. China's CPI inflation figures for December were sharply higher rising 2.5% yoy as compared to the slightly lower market forecast of 2.3%.

With a cold winter in progress, food prices took a real jump in the latest figures. In the US, the trade deficit for November widened by more than expected to US$48.7bn as imports jumped 3.8% mom indicating consumer spending is picking up but also casting doubts on how strong GDP growth was in the US in the 4th quarter.

Today we will see the release of ANZ job ads for December along with November's housing finance data. Later this week (Thursday) we see the latest unemployment figures for Australia.

Chinese GDP data for Q4 will be released on Friday along with figures for industrial production, retail sales and fixed asset investment.

We also should keep an eye on a speech tonight by Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke for any clues as to any changes in the existing QE program.

Majors: The EUR continued to move higher against the USD reaching above the 1.3300 level as hopes of any further rate cuts have faded since last week's ECB meeting and ECB President Draghi's comments that they are seeing significant improvements in financial markets.

This has caused the AUDEUR cross rate to dip again below .7900 and we may see further weakness mainly due to the strength of the EUR versus the USD in the next few weeks.

We will see a slew of economic data this week from the US including retail sales, the Empire state manufacturing index, CPI data
(Wednesday) and consumer confidence survey at the end of the week.
Economic Calendar
14 JAN AU MI Inflation Gauge m/m
AU ANZ Job advertisements
AU Home Loans m/m
EU Industrial Production
US Fed Chairman Bernanke Speaks

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