EUR/usd

One of the clearest signs of optimism in business is increase in M&A deals. The companies, which have access to relatively cheap loans and which preferred not to invest when the situation was pretty much uncertain, now feel that the world is changing. It seems that they started to open their sacks with cash more and more eagerly. Of course, we are talking about strong companies as the crisis has left either winners or firms with good brands but less favourable access to money. The latter are being hunted with enthusiasm now. News about increase in activity of this kind gives support to the stock market as such deals are regarded as beneficial for aggressive companies. The news background has helped the US S&P 500 index to stop consolidation around 1515 and go close to 1530. Note that growth has been lasting for eight weeks in a row. The better figures were seen only in 1Q of 2009, when the index was pushing off the cyclical bottom. Then stock exchanges were growing for nine consecutive weeks. All that made up a favourable news background for the single currency. The euro followed the US exchanges, appreciating against the dollar. eurusd went up to 1.3434 during the Asian session today. The last week's losses were almost fully recouped. It's surprising that the single currency ignored the favourable stats on German's ZEW index and actually was declining after their release, the major growth fell on the end of the US and Asian sessions.

GBP/USD

We can hardly find any currency that would be weaker than the pound this month. Even the yen is tired of falling and is generally trading sideways now. In the meantime the sterling keeps getting cheaper. This looks particularly surprising and uncommon as it takes place despite optimism in the foreign exchanges. Last night traders kept withdrawing their money from Britain, which apparently  was invested there a year ago on concerns about the euro zone. gbpusd fell to 1.5414 last night, this is the lowest level since July 12, 2012. We can't say that we didn't expect such an outcome in the pair. The surprising thing here is that all this is happening while the dollar is on the decline.

NZD/USD

The New Zealand dollar has been a wonderful alternative to its Australian counterpart in recent weeks as the latter has suffered from expectations that the RBA would ease its monetary policy. No one expects this from New Zealand. Moreover, the business sentiment indicators are now positive there, which points at possible acceleration in the country's economic growth in the near future. However, the Kiwi  has gone so high that lost resistance to bad news. It was shaken by the message that China gets rid of dried milk because of the bugs discovered there. For a while the Kiwi tried to resist the selling pressure caused by the claims of the biggest New Zealand exporter denying that it was their goods. However, today NZD has continued to decline. Now it is trading at 0.84 whereas at the end of the previous week the pair was as high as 0.8530.

gold

Optimism in the stock exchanges costs Gold dear. This precious metal has been depreciating since last October. Over recently trading has been held near the lower bound of the downward channel, close to $1605/oz. Last year Gold received strong support at 1570. Perhaps, gold bugs shouldn't expect much before these levels are achieved.