Today’s main event will be Theresa May’s speech on Brexit. Naturally this speech is regarded as the most anticipated event since last June, where Brexit took place. Speculation over the weekend indicated that the PM will use this chance to indicate a hard Brexit so any deviation from this agenda could help GBP recover from its lows it traded yesterday. Reports that have leaked over the weekend indicate that the PM will announce that UK is prepared to leave EU in order to regain control over immigration. This will have serious economic implications for the country. In other news, UK will release inflation data while in the US we have manufacturing data.

Important Note: the current OIL contract will expire at 15:00 Gmt. All OIL/USD  trades will close automatically at that time. 

Currencies: GBP/USD traded 200 pips below Friday’s close, breaking 1.20 over concerns on Theresa May Speech, but has stabilized ever since and trades at 1.2100 at time of writing. EUR/GBP fell back below the 0.88 after trading above 0.8850 temporarily. While EUR also managed to recover from 1.06 to 1.0640, the big mover overnight was the JPY. USD/JPY which dropped 100 points to 113.24 on the back of 2 risk events this week. May’s speech and Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday. AUD/USD  traded at 0.7501, up 0.31%.

Stocks: US markets were closed for Martin Luther King yesterday. The combination of Brexit and Trump’s economic policy as well as a stronger JPY, have put pressure on Asian equities this morning, where most stocks are in the red with Nikkei leading losses with -1.48% so far.

Oil and Gold: Undoubtedly gold has benefited from the risky environment. Yesterday the yellow metal posted new highs, its 8th in the last 9 sessions. Gold peaked at $1212.75, its highest since November 23rd. Gold benefits from risk aversion, as traders always seek its relative “safety” but also benefits from a weak Dollar, as purchasing it in stronger currencies such as EUR becomes cheaper with the Dollar under pressure. Oil was stable at $52.50.