15:00: At the start of the North American open USD strength remains the focus

Shaun Osborne at TD Securities confirms that as we approach the start of the North American session currency markets will be concerning themselves with the USD:

"Market sentiment hasn’t changed much overnight and in the FX space, the drive toward the USD remains the overarching theme. Softer commodity prices and a stalling of the equity rally has reinforced the pressure on risk currencies, and the commodity bloc currencies have been beaten down the most."

12:40: RBS not keen on the UK's prospects

Just as everyone starts to feel a little better about the UK's economic future along come the bears from RBS.

Ross Walker, at the bank's RBS European Economics unit - says:

"There is a growing air of optimism around the UK – even Mervyn King sounded faintly upbeat at the May Inflation Report launch. Are the proverbial green shoots of recovery finally surfacing? We remain cautiously pessimistic.

"A flurry of better high-frequency data should not obscure entrenched macroeconomic imbalances and structural impediments. Our central scenario is for a modest pick-up in GDP growth but the defining feature of the UK economy will continue to be protracted deleveraging.

"Muted income growth, further fiscal consolidation, hesitant business investment and weaker external demand mean many of those green shoots will turn out to be weeds."

12:00: GBP/AUD surges

Relief for the under-pressure GBP/AUD.

"The aussie dollar is taking a real battering at present, with AUD/USD declines below parity triggering AUD losses across the board. Weak data from both the eurozone and the US didn’t reflect positively on the outlook for commodity-producing economies like Australia," says Richard Driver at CaxtonFX in a morning briefing.

10:15: Technical forecast for GBP/USD

Craig Erlam at Alpari gives us the technical forecast for sterling today:

"Sterling has been in a downward spiral against the dollar for the last week or so, since hitting the big 50 fib level. Yesterday’s candle though suggests that traders may be prepared to take a break from selling the pound, although that break may well be a brief one. Yesterday’s candle is a textbook spinning top, which given that it’s come following some heavy selling, is a bullish signal.

9:00: Gold price declines point us towards the strong US dollar

The US dollar is in the ascendency, and for sterling and other currencies, this is where near-term direction will be gleaned from today.

Stephen Gallo at BMO Capital Markets says:

"The strong USD hype is if nothing else confirmed by the weakness in the gold price, but it may also be the case that the general weakness in European equity markets today is a further confirmation that the paradigm is now broadly shifting to a world in which the “QE trade” is more of a two-way feature than ever before.

"We remain of the view that this latest move higher in the USD may take some “heavy lifting” in terms of economic data flow or monetary policy “speak” to restrain."