VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Sterling scaled a six-week peak early on Monday following recent hawkish-sounding comments from the Bank of England, while the other major currencies were subdued in a holiday-riddled week.

The coming week will go a long way to dictating whether Greece remains in the euro zone. A meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday is tasked with producing a deal that will keep Greece solvent and which is acceptable to both sides.

The Swiss currency shock has raised an awkward question many investors have been fearful of asking - what if central banks become as unpredictable and fallible as they are powerful?

The dollar was on track to end 2014 with a gain of 12 percent against a basket of major currencies, and anticipated U.S. interest rake hikes may strengthen its appeal in the new year.

The dollar edged up against the yen on Friday in light bargain-hunting following two sessions of losses, with some markets slowly getting into gear after the Christmas holiday.

Japan aims to give a quick boost to lagging regional economies and low-income households with subsidies, merchandise vouchers and other schemes in a $29 billion stimulus package aimed at rejuvenating a two-year reflationary effort, a draft of the plan showed.

World markets are ending their last full week of 2014 on a high, as Wall Street made its biggest two-day advance since late 2011 and European shares headed for their strongest week of the year.

Gold prices tumbled on Monday after Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected proposals to boost gold reserves in a referendum, joining the broad rout in commodities that sent oil prices to five-year lows and copper to four-year lows.

Asian shares gave back some of their China-inspired gains on Tuesday, while oil prices slumped ahead of this week's OPEC meeting.

With US Fed likely to increase the interest rates by mid 2015 and ECB and BoJ keeping their monetary policy accommodative, there could be major capital flows from euro area and Japan into the US and thereby leading to further strengthening of the US dollar.

U.S. consumer spending fell for the first time in eight months in September, suggesting the economy lost some momentum heading into the fourth quarter.

A top Japanese government official said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should delay a planned sales-tax increase, the strongest sign yet that economic weakness is causing concern among those close to the premier ahead of the difficult tax decision.

The yen languished at two-week lows against the dollar early on Friday, having come under renewed pressure overnight after an encouraging rally on Wall Street dampened demand for the safe haven currency.

The Federal Reserve provided $240 million of liquidity to foreign central banks in the latest week via its swap lines for foreign central banks, the New York Fed said on Thursday.

The Bank of Japan bought one-year government bills at negative yields in market operations on Friday, traders said, setting a new milestone as it pushes its aggressive asset purchase scheme.