The big story in the financial markets today was not the improvements in economic data, but the improvement in earnings. The health of the financial sector is critical to the recovery in the U.S. economy and therefore investors are keeping a particularly close eye on the reports from the banking sector. In order for the global economy to have any chance of recovering, banks need to stabilize and start turning a profit so they will feel comfortable enough to lend. Therefore the better than expected results from Wells Fargo has been received positively by the equity and currency markets. The U.S. dollar sold off against the commodity currencies and rallied against the Japanese Yen. The dollar also gained strength against the euro and British pound, which is not in line with the improvement in risk appetite because of euro and pound specific reasons that we will discuss further in the respective sections.

With no US economic data on the calendar today, the dollar weakened against every major currency except for the British pound. Trading continues to be very thin with commodities being the only products that are really moving. The tensions in the Middle East have driven oil and gold prices higher. US stocks also gave back Friday’s gains and remained contained within its week long trading range.