While the most recent recovery in stocks remains fragile and is being considered by man as a mere technical bounce after having suffered hefty losses during the past few weeks it will be interesting to see if the rally can continue today.

Centre stage in early trading will be taking the eagerly awaited Spanish bond auctions. In light of the recent turmoil in financial markets and the Spanish banking sector crisis deepening it might not necessarily be the best time to ask investors for money and confidence. However on the other hand with Spanish bond yields having risen substantially over the past few weeks making them more attractive as an investment and the amount of money being raised being considered as rather small, somewhat in the region of 2 Billion USD, the auction itself should be manageable without yields demanded by investors spiking too much to the upside.

Later on all eyes will be on the BOE meeting with British central bankers having to decide if the recent decline seen in the economy is warranting further stimulus measures in form of quantitative easing. Overall there is no further stimulus expected for this meeting but with the European financial crisis having worsened substantially since the last BOE meeting, bankers might just decide to take pre-emptive stimulus measure before things get even worse after all.

In the afternoon Fed Chief Bernanke will be testifying before Congress about the outlook of the economy, with many expecting that Bernanke will be confirming what many have already started speculating on that due to the recent string of worse than expected economic data with especially weakness seen in the job market further stimulus measures have become much more likely and imminent.

Markus Huber - Head of German HNW Trading - ETX Capital
www.etxcapital.com