Foreign investment in Canadian securities amounted to $6.1 billion in March, led by acquisitions of money market instruments. At the same time, Canadian investors reduced their holdings of foreign securities by $1.9 billion, the first divestment in four months.

In the first quarter of 2018, Canada's international transactions in securities generated a net outflow of funds from the economy of $1.7 billion, following eight consecutive quarters of net inflows of funds

In the week ending May 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 222,000, an increase of 11,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 211,000. The 4-week moving average was 213,250, a decrease of 2,750 from the previous week's unrevised average of 216,000. This is the lowest level for this average since December 13, 1969 when it was 210,750.

• Nord stream 2 pipeline in Baltic sea raises intelligence and military concerns

• Says construction of pipeline would allow Russia to place new listening, monitoring technology on pipeline route

EUR/USD

Resistance levels (open interest**, contracts)

$1.1955 (1888)

$1.1927 (786)

$1.1884 (274)

Price at time of writing this review: $1.1795

Support levels (open interest**, contracts):

$1.1751 (2971)

$1.1725 (2719)

$1.1694 (3242)

Comments:

- Overall open interest on the CALL options and PUT options with the expiration date June, 8 is 152879 contracts (according to data from May, 16) with the maximum number of contracts with strike price $1,1400 (7135);

GBP/USD

Resistance levels (open interest**, contracts)

$1.3660 (1772)

$1.3629 (763)

$1.3603 (941)

Price at time of writing this review: $1.3535

Support levels (open interest**, contracts):

$1.3472 (1402)

$1.3444 (630)

$1.3425 (1461)

Comments:

- Overall open interest on the CALL options with the expiration date June, 8 is 37775 contracts, with the maximum number of contracts with strike price $1,3700 (2251);

- Overall open interest on the PUT options with the expiration date June, 8 is 40228 contracts, with the maximum number of contracts with strike price $1,3400 (2486);

- The ratio of PUT/CALL was 1.06 versus 1.06 from the previous trading day according to data from May, 16.

* - The Chicago Mercantile Exchange bulletin (CME) is used for the calculation.

** - Open interest takes into account the total number of option contracts that are open at the moment.

• U.S. restrictions would be credit negative for chinese technology cos in near term by slowing product development and sales, and increasing costs

The trend participation rate increased to a further record high of 65.7 per cent in April 2018, according to the latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today.

"The labour force participation rate was the highest it has been since the series began in 1978, indicating increasing attachment to the labour force," the Chief Economist for the ABS, Bruce Hockman, said.

In line with the increasing participation rate, employment increased by around 14,000 with part-time employment increasing by 8,000 persons and full-time employment by 6,000 persons in April 2018. This continued the recent slowing of employment growth, particularly full-time employment growth.

The trend unemployment rate remained at 5.5 per cent in April 2018 after the March figure was revised down.

"The unemployment rate has continued to be relatively constrained over the past year, and is still hovering around 5.5 to 5.7 per cent", Mr Hockman said.

The seasonally adjusted number of persons employed increased by almost 23,000 persons in April 2018. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased 0.1 percentage points to 5.6 per cent, and the seasonally adjusted labour force participation rate increased slightly to 65.6 per cent.