Morning Meeting: Condition of anonymity.

Good Morning.

Asian stocks took their lead form the US today, where better than expected retail sales helped push the DJIA up 0.7%, its biggest percentage gain in over a month. Sentiment was helped by Citi last earnings, which beat expectations.

Yesterday's US macro data strengthened the US dollar versus the Japanese yen sending the greenback 0.30% higher to 78.79 Yen, up from Yen 78.71 in late trading on Monday and well above Yen 78.41 late Friday. The move in the currency market drove investors into Japanese exporters sending the Nikkei Stock Average 1.22% higher to 8,682.94.  The Nikkei led gainers in Asia this morning towing South Korea's Kospi 0.77% higher to 1,940.35 and the Shanghai Composite Index up 0.55% to 2,110.21.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng traded 0.28% higher to 21,207.97 as investors are now bracing for Thursday's China gross domestic product data, which will be used to assess the state of Asia's largest economy.

On Thursday, a summit of European leasers is scheduled to commence and Spain will be the focus amid uncertainty over if and when Spain would formally request aid from its European partners, a move required before the European Central Bank can start buying up Spanish bonds.

In the mean time a report published by the WSJ citing a Spanish official said that Spain is considering a request for a credit line from the EU's new bailout mechanism giving the first details of the country's plans for seeking help to avoid its debt problems. In details in an evening briefing a senior Spanish Finance Ministry officials is reported to say that Spain was seeking support from euro-zone partners to go forward with a bailout request. But he said the government was uncertain of unanimous backing because of what he called concerns that investor nervousness over the stability of the euro could then spread to heavily indebted Italy.

There are two points in the briefing that caught my attention:

•  He was confident that the EU wouldn't impose conditions much beyond the steps Spain is taking by itself.
• The official indicated that Spain could fall short of its own austerity goals—in particular its commitment to slash its 2012 budget-deficit target to 6.3% of gross domestic product from more than 9% of GDP last year.

But what I personally do not understand is: why does a Spanish Finance Ministry officials have to speak on condition of anonymity?

The common currency positively reacted to the news gaining 0.15% versus the greenback trading at 1.2968$, the move in the currency market kept Oil and Gold in positive territory up respectively 0.07% to 91.91$ a barrel (WTI) and 0,03% to 1,738.20 an ounce.

German ZEW Economic sentiment will be under the spotlight today, it's expected at -15 versus -18.2 at previous reading,  while the European ZEW Economic Sentiment is expected at -1.1 versus -3.8 at last month reading.

The possibility that the “phantom” of the Spanish Finance Ministry senior official will take the spotlight this morning, what the WSJ reported is too important to not be taken into consideration few days before the Eu leaders' meeting therefore keep an eye open.

Have a great day.

Originally posted at www.77sigmatrading.com