hello and welcome to cnbc s worldwide exchange. global equities a little firmer today. the ftse cnbc global 300 just up 27 points. as you can see, we had a positive close to u.s. markets yesterday. and right now, we re up 0.5% for the ftse 100. back over 5,000. 0.7% for the xetra dax. the cac 40 and smi firmer, as well. also on the currency markets, well, a volatile day already. dollar index has been down at 76 points, it trimmed its losses after we set off the saudi central bank came out and sort of trashed this report that they were looking at possibly looking at a new basket of reserve to price oil in. nevertheless, dollar/yen off its lows, back to 89.23. euro/dollar, 1.47 21. sterling against the dollar is just over 1.6039. the aussie/dollar doing fairly well this morning, as well, on the back of that rba bank announcement. just getting halifax house prices out, as well. we ve had some data out on the new car registrations, as well, in the uk. the halifax house price