Equities advance cautiously after Wall Street rebound

The Dollar strengthening has halted currently ahead of the US durable goods orders report at 16:30 CET today. The live dollar index data show the ICE US Dollar index, a measure of the dollar’s strength against a basket of six rival currencies, slipped 0.03% Thursday after Labor Department report above expected 870 thousand Americans filed for first-time benefits instead of forecast of 840,000. At the same time new single-family home sales rose 43% over year in August. Both EUR/USD and GBP/USD reversed their sliding yesterday as Germany’s Ifo business climate index rose a fifth month, in line with expectations. Both Pound and euro are higher against the Dollar currently. Both yen and Australian dollar continued sliding yesterday against the greenback with the dynamics reversed for both currently.

Futures on three main US stock indexes are higher currently after rebounding Thursday. The three main US stock benchmarks recorded gains ranging from 0.2% to 0.4% despite Goldman Sachs cutting its US growth forecast for the fourth quarter in half, to 3% from 6%. European stock indexes are down today after ending lower Thursday. Asian indexes are moistly rising currently with Australia’s All Ordinaries ASX 200 Index leading gainers.

Brent is extending gains today. Oil prices rose yesterday after the Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday that US crude inventories fell for a second straight week by 1.6 million barrels. The US oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures ended higher yesterday: October WTI rose 1% and is higher currently. November Brent crude closed 0.4% higher at $41.94 a barrel on Thursday.

Gold prices are retracing higher today . December gold lost Thursday settling 0.5% lower at $1876.90 an ounce.