• Thursday's session in the financial markets proceeded in a positive mood until the close of the cash session on the Old Continent. 
• Germany's DAX closed 0.45% higher, France's CAC40 added 0.52%. Shares of Sartorius lost more than 15% amid Q1 results suggesting business slowdown 
• Wall Street is currently dominated by declines, even though we initially saw increases here as well. The benchmark S&P500 is down 0.2% at the time of publication, with the Nasdaq losing 0.31%. Nearly 0.15%, however, is recorded by the Russell 2000 index.
• Taiwanese giant TSMC loses today more than 4% despite stronger than expected Q1 results. Nvidia gains 0.5% and SuperMicro loses almost 2%
• Meta Platforms shares are gaining more than 2% today after Bernstein raised its target price and debuted its LLama 3 language model, which the company will make available in its applications today
• After the close of today's session on Wall Street, Netflix will present its results. 
• In the FX market, the Canadian dollar and the US dollar are currently leading the gains. Much weaker performers include the New Zealand dollar and the euro. 
• The USD's strength today was fueled by hawkish comments from bankers and spoiling sentiment in the latter part of the session. Raphael Bostic of the Fed communicated that interest rate cuts before the end of 2024 are unlikely.
• Also, Fed Williams suggested that Fed definitely will not hurry with cutting rates and markets now see only one fully-priced Fed rate cut, in November 2024
• USD quotes were also supported by lower-than-expected unemployment benefits data and a much higher reading on the FED's Philly regional data. 
• An extension of the "risk-off" wave also propelled precious metals during today's session. Gold and silver gained close to 1% at the time of publication.
• The ECB's Holzmann suggested that in the absence of any US cuts, 3-4 rate cuts in the Eurozone seem uncertain to him
• Cryptocurrency sentiment improved slightly, with Bitcoin managing to rise from $61,000 to $64,000 today but altcoins sentiment remains weak
• Cocoa prices are up more than 8.8%, climbing to new historic highs above $11,000 per ton. The increases intensified during the opening of U.S. trading, although it is worth noting that prices opened with a bullish gap today, following this morning's release of processing data from Europe and Asia. The processing data can be viewed as demand data and indicates that despite high prices, cocoa consumption is still high, with no demand destruction on the horizon