Euro down after comments from Jean-Claude Trichet

[RTFX-Trading]

What’s new:
Trichet: the next rate cut could be 25 basis points.
England: Further cuts in the expenditure budget of £ 10 billion.
Financial Times: General Motors could sell almost anything for control of Opel
BOE: Blanchflower said that the crisis is not unexpected.
Obama: says the U.S. economy remains under pressure

Today:
14:30 United States: US Mar Chicago Fed, previous -2.83
16:00 United States: US Mar Leading Indicators, exp -0.20%, previous -0.40%

Asian Session ranges and indices:

EURUSD:  1.3054 – 1.2966.
USDCHF:  1.1719 – 1.1655.
GBPUSD:  1.4813 – 1.4672.
EURCHF: 1.5224 – 1.5181.
USDJPY:  99.41 – 98.63.
DowJones:  8'131 +0.07%.
NASDAQ:  1'354 +0.07%.
S&P 500: 870 +0.07%.
Nikkei:  8'925 +0.19%
Crude Oil: $49.70 -1.25%.

Comments:

The Tokyo Stock Exchange ended the session up 0.19%. Wall Street ended a slight increase Friday, completing its sixth consecutive session of progress, optimism eventually prevailed in markets that have swung between negative and positive, which led the market to take refuge in haven currencies like the greenback.

The euro fell to a one-month low against the dollar and three months low against the yen on uncertainty over what the European Central Bank's next step will be. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said that the next move would be a quarter-point reduction in rates, but other officials have sent mixed signals on what unconventional measures could be adopted.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet in a newspaper interview played down some recent encouraging data that raised market hopes the global economy may have already seen the worst of the financial and economic crisis. "With respect to 2009, let's be prepared for having a very difficult year," Trichet told a Japanese newspaper. "In the course of the year, you have ups and downs: a mixture of better indicators and worse ones. Therefore, I would not overemphasize whatever we are observing.”

In a series of interviews with Japanese media, the ECB chief suggested the central bank was prepared to lower its benchmark rate by a cautious quarter point to a record low of 1 percent next month. But he is keeping markets guessing over other unconventional steps the ECB could take to help the euro zone economy, which pushed the euro down to a one-month low against the dollar on Monday.

Unlike U.S., Japanese and British central banks, which have brought rates close to zero and began direct asset purchases, the ECB is reluctant to cut rates much beyond 1 percent and has yet to make use of its unconventional arsenal.

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