Euro Adrift Austria Next in Line for the EFSF Test

Austrian EFSF vote set to be passed, Eurozone September CPI and unemployment to remain unchanged from August, Italian CPI, UK consumer confidence improves slightly but still remains negative, Canada GDP set to rise. Ashraf's Premium trades are up

Having circumnavigated around a major bump in the road with the passing in the German Bundestag of the EFSF changes agreed on July 21st attention now turns to the Austrian vote later today. It is likely it will pass in the same manner as all the other votes have gone this week. In the likely event of the successful voting through of the measures, the only remaining obstacle is Slovakia where they are due to vote on 25th October.

The return of the troika to Greece yesterday was greeted with protests against fresh austerity measures, however government officials remained confident that Greece remained on course to receive the next tranche of money by the 13th October deadline.

Looking ahead to next weeks ECB meeting, todays release of European flash CPI data for September is expected to show that price pressures show no sign of increasing within Europe with expectations that they remain unchanged at 2.5%. The unemployment rate is also expected to remain unchanged at 10%, despite yesterdays surprise drop in German unemployment to 6.9% from 7%.

Italian CPI numbers are, on the other hand expected to spike slightly higher but not by enough to warrant concern with expectations of a rise to 2.6%, from 2.3%. Italy has bigger concerns than higher prices in any case after bond yields jumped to post euro highs at yesterdays debt auctions as investors remain concerned that the recent austerity measures, though necessary dont deal with the real problem, which is low growth.

In the UK the pound had a better day after better then expected lending data, while todays Gfk consumer confidence survey for September showed that the consumer remains extremely pessimistic about the economic outlook, even though there was a slight improvement, coming in at -30, from Augusts -31 reading.

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China HSBC manufacturing PMI remained unchanged at 49.9 showing that the manufacturing sector continued to stagnate in September, amid weak domestic and overseas demand.

In Canada annual GDP is expected to jump from 2% to 2.3%