Themes

• General mood is “risk off”
• All eyes on news coming out of the Ukraine after Russia begins to move in
• Fed’s Mester: Unfolding situation in Ukraine will be a consideration

What’s Moving

It was all about the Ukraine overnight with markets pretty much shrugging off everything else to move into the standard war positioning.

This saw the Dollar firmer against all of the majors, gold stronger (but currently off earlier highs) and oil trade to $100/bbl. Flows were strong, but individual trade size was small, with players being conservative with their bets and still hoping for sovereign intervention to prevent further action.

Thoughts

Expect pre-weekend positioning from locals to be the dominant flow today in Asia. The Dollar bid started here and its expected that locals would most likely want to square up before the weekend.

Today sees Tokyo Core CPI (E: +0.4%) but its likely to be ignored.

Pivot Points