Equity Indices

The FTSE100 Index has dropped every day this year following its first December decline since 2002. The volume of FTSE 100 shares changing hands was 29 percent higher than the 30-day average, while the Stoxx 600 has fallen 5.2 percent from an almost seven-year high last month, amid a slump in oil-and-gas companies and growing concern over the  possibility of Greece exiting the euro area.

Interest Rates

Benchmark Bond Yields

The Treasury on Tuesday accepted 2 million 28-day Treasury bills at an average yield of  0.015% and 12 million 91-day Treasury bills at an average yield of  0.035% . Outstanding Treasury Bills now amount to Euro 157,440,000 - an increase of Euro 8 million from the previous week.

The euro zone economy ended 2014 with its worst quarter for over a year, according to surveys of activity that highlighted continuing downturns in France and Italy and a stuttering performance by paymaster Germany.  Britain, outside the currency union, experienced a similarly gloomy end to the year, with growth across services companies weakening to its slowest since mid-2013. That underscored a wider loss of pace in the economy as an election approaches. Italy's service sector shrank for the first time in three months in December while overall business activity in France contracted.

China's annual economic growth likely slowed to 7.2 percent in the fourth quarter, the weakest since the depths of the global crisis, a Reuters poll showed, which would keep pressure on policymakers to head off a sharper slowdown this year.  The expected slowdown in growth of the world's second-largest economy, from 7.3 percent in the June-September quarter, means full-year would undershoot the government's 7.5 percent target and mark the weakest expansion in 24 years.

 

Forex

The rouble fell more than 4 percent in thin, volatile holiday trading as oil prices hit a new 5-1/2-year low while Sterling slid to a 17-month low against the dollar as further signs that Britain's economic recovery may be losing steam prompted investors to push back expectations of when the Bank of England will raise interest rates.

The Euro reached nine-year lows  as collapsing oil prices and worries about the world economy drove skittish investors into the arms of safe-haven sovereign debt.  From Japan to Germany to Australia, government borrowing costs reached all-time lows as oil fell 10 percent in just two days and investors wrestled with the risk of global deflation.

 

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