GBPUSD TECHS: Bull Cycle Extends

Six of Presidnet-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees will face Senate scrutiny today, starting with Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi who will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee shortly. LIVESTREAM None of the nominees appearing today are expected to face significant resistance to their confirmation.

• In roughly 30 mins, the next four hearings will kick off: Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CIA Director nominee John Ratcliffe at the Senate Intelligence Select Committee, and Transportation Secretary nominee Sean Duffy at the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
• Today's nomination hearings will conclude with Office of Management and Budget director nominee Russ Voight appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at 13:30 ET 18:30 GMT.
• Rubio, a China hawk with broad bipartisan support, is expected to deliver a stern critique of China’s foreign and industrial policy in his remarks to the Foreign Relations Committee.
• Rubio will say, per his prepared statement: "The postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us. And all this has led us to a moment in which we must now confront the single greatest risk of geopolitical instability and generational global crisis in the lifetime of anyone alive here today."

Focus turns to the US Cash Equity open, the SPX, NDX and the Dow are all set to gap higher on the open, despite the small fade off the high in Equity Futures.

• Calls: SPX: 5,936.2 (+1.6%); DJIA: 43,229 (+1.7%/+711pts); NDX: 21,136.6 (+1.8%).

Around three-quarters of the 0.08pp slowdown in core CPI slowdown in December (to 0.23% M/M from 0.31% prior) can be attributed to the deceleration in core goods (to 0.05% from 0.31%). See table below.

•  Core services' slight deceleration (to 0.27% from 0.28%) also helped, with the unexpected drop in hotel prices and slowdown in medical services helping to offset the acceleration in housing plus airfares (which had almost an equal upside effect despite housing's vastly larger CPI basket weighting).
• Outside of the most closely watched categories for which we have consensus, a few of the larger ones of note that largely came in on the soft side, possibly helping explain the modest downside "miss" for core CPI:
• Apparel (2.5% of total CPI basket, rose 0.1% vs 0.2% prior), new vehicles (3.6% of CPI, rose 0.5% vs 0.6% prior) and medical care services (6.5% of CPI, rose 0.2% vs 0.4% prior) pulled back vs Nov (And for PCE purposes: dental services fell 0.2% M/M, a 4-month low, after +0.5% prior).
• Household furnishings/operations (4.4% of CPI) came in at 0.0% vs 0.6% prior.
• We also note that alcoholic beverages (0.8% of CPI), which are part of core goods, saw their softest print in 12 months (-0.3%).
• Not slowing sequentially but still contributing to the core softness was communication (3.2% of CPI), deflating for a 5rd consecutive month, albeit at a lesser rate, at -0.1% vs -1.0% prior.