One day’s rally becomes next day’s dive in the current fragile market environment, and that is what we witnessed for stocks and equities over the last two days we saw big gains printed in NY, Asia and European sessions, however come today and we have already started negatively. The NIKEI ended up almost 200 points down early morning and so far Europe is in the red as new worries about the economic future are doing the rounds amongst investors as another wave of disappointing company earnings reports hit the markets. Traders are not comfortable enough to sustain gains for a long period of time as in the back of their minds; the economic crisis and risk aversion always prevails!

The EUR/USD gained yesterday towards 1.29, however the move was not strong enough to break important resistance of 1.2870 and therefore the pair met with sellers on rallies! For now, traders are waiting today’s data before they commit further on the upside, and if the latter level gives way, then 1.2930-50 becomes the next target! As long as the pair trades above 1.2660-80 it looks good for further gains, however a break of the latter level may open the way towards 1.26 ahead of 1.2580.

Today the economic calendar has a few important economic releases from the US, retail sales and jobless claims, both of which will be closely monitored by traders in order to see how the economy is progressing. The retail sales is expected to be yet another negative number, as statistics show that consumers were reluctant to spend due to the high unemployment and high job losses. It will be interesting to watch the jobless claims, as it may give us a hint as to what the next payroll number may be. For the last few weeks, the jobless claims are extremely high and that seems likely to continue for now. Today we also have the interest rate announcement from the Swiss National bank and traders expect them to lower its labour rate from 0.50% down to 0.25% - another case of rates close to zero.

Let’s see what the rest of the day brings and how markets will react to retail sales numbers! There are always risks to the downside for now, as investors fear that bad economic data outlines the severity of the economic conditions in US and the efforts Obama’s administration are using are not enough to create a solution for the current turmoil.