The US dollar moved in a narrow range against the euro in early European forex trading on the forex market today before the release of US Gross Domestic Produc (GDP) data. This follows reports that debt-ridden Greece its bond holders will continue talking; hopefully they will reach a unanimous conclusion.

“Today looks like it will be a day of consolidation for markets, although high-beta assets will continue to be underpinned by the Fed’s dovish slant,” said Mitul Kotecha, a head of global forex strategy at Credit Agricole, as quoted by MarketWatch.

Dubai: Abu Dhabi’s stock exchange on Wednesday denied rumours that its website had been attacked by hackers.

“ADX website experienced some technical difficulties yesterday, 17th of January, resulting in the site running slow; we have subsequently resolved these technical issues and the website was back to its normal original state," the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange said in a statement.

Several media outlets had reported that an Israeli group calling itself IDF Team had targeted the websites of stock markets in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi in retaliation for a similar hacking assault on Monday that targeted the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al, the Israeli national airline.

Source: gulfnews.com

EUR/USD moved from about 1.2750 to almost 1.2790 in early European forex trading.
Tomorrow the ECB is set to issue an interest-rate decision, and forex experts at Barclays Capital are quoted by MarketWatch saying that they are not expecting the result to be a surprise or a marked shift in sentiment toward the Eurozone countries.

“The overall impression that is likely to be given is that the [ECB] Governing Council remains worried about prospects for activity to a much greater extent than inflation, and while there may be some further measures to make the non-conventional operations more effective, it is highly unlikely to be a complete game-changer,” the forex strategists said.

US non-farm payrolls (the proverbial NFP) rose 200,000. The unemployment rate in the US is 8.5%. The news sent the Euro/Dollar forex pair down more than 50 pips in about half hour of forex trading before the bell.

The euro lost about 50 pips today on the forex market after 523 banks across Europe asked the ECB for 3-year loans of a total of 489 billion euros, or $641 billion. Theforex scheme is known as LTROs, shorter for the mouthful "longer-term refinancing operations".

If European financial institutions borrow too much, forex traders could get really jittery that what's happening is that banks are amassing risky carry trades — borrowing at low rates from the ECB and buying high-yielding peripheral (Greek-like junk) sovereign debt.

“The crux of the issue is where will this cheap money be spent,” says Chris Fernandes, a forex adviser at Bank of the West, as quotes by MarketWatch.