LONDON -- (Marketwire) -- 01/08/13 -- City Index UK - Risk consolidates at higher levels as FX treads water. Japan's finance minister gave the euro a boost overnight as he said Japan will buy ESM bonds with the country's FX reserves.

The market initially saw this as a further measure to weaken the JPY with some speculation that the decision was also of global political importance with Europe not entirely happy about the JPY being deliberately weakened.

The move in EUR/JPY had caught the intraday market wrong footed as an earlier article in the WSJ had boosted the JPY after the report speculated that some Japanese companies had concerns that the JPY had fallen too fast and was impacting on fuel imports.

Read full article here: Japanese Finance minister boosts Euro

The AUD was the stand out under performer in the FX world overnight after Australia published the largest trade deficit in November since March 2008. The deficit widened to AUD 2.6 billion with the consensus looking for AUD 2.3 billion.

Today's data highlights consist of the Eurozone economic sentiment, retail sales and unemployment along with the German current account and factory orders releases.

Across the pond this afternoon we get the NFIB small business survey whilst the Fed releases consumer credit data for November and Alcoa kicks-off the earnings season.

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