Regional bourses are lower by just under 0.5% on average. Gold is trading at $1597/oz, having earlier seen record highs above $1599/oz. Oil is trading flat at $97.20 but some soft commodities like wheat and corn are over 1% lower.

EUR/USD bottomed out at 1.4059 earlier, helped by some significant bids in EUR/GBP, though most traders are expecting a retest of 1.4000 sometime later today, especially if more negative headlines regarding the ETA bank tests emerge. USD/JPY is unchanged on the session and the CHF has been dominated by one of the bigger Swiss players, who obviously held all the orders and all the cards today.