Another busy day ahead for markets, with plenty of announcements due and a couple of prominent central bank figures speaking.

The USD continues its strong run of late against the Euro, hovering in the low $1.17 range, almost dipping into $1.16 territory, before pulling back slightly. The EUR/USD pairing is currently trading at $1.1736. We are likely to see some movement in the pairing to significant data releases this week. Speeches by central bankers could also spark some weakening/strengthening. The GBP/USD pairing as retreated back off its highs of almost $1.36 from last week, now trading at $1.3236. This is mainly due to a strengthening dollar.

US stocks continue to power ahead with all three major US indexes ending the session at record highs. The Dow was the best performer, up 84.07 points (+0.37%) to close at 22,641.67. The NASDAQ and the S&P 500 finished almost neck and neck, the NASDAQ up 15 points (+0.23%) and the S&P 500 up 5.46 points (+0.22%) to end the session at 6,531.71 and 2,534.58 respectively. Turning to Europe and the FTSE performed well, despite the UK posting a big miss in Construction PMI data (48.1 vs 51.1 expected). It ended the session up 29.27 points (+0.39%) at 7,468.11. The German bank holiday meant that the DAX was closed overnight.

Looking to the day ahead and the ADP Non-Farm Employment Change data is the most significant data release. This is released two days before the official government Non-Farm figures, which almost always causes market volatility. Fed Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and ECB President Mario Draghi are also due to speak in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Other announcements today include:

China – Bank holiday

Australia – ANZ Commodity Prices

UK – Services PMI

Europe – Italian & Spanish Services PMIs, European, German & French Final Services PMIs, European Retail Sales

US – ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI, Crude Oil Inventories, Final Services PMI