enough of facebook s social networking site. all right. two hours of good stuff still to come, but you can see investors are still very nervous this morning. this after falls of another half a percent yesterday. ftse down. a fresh 2,012. nasdaq still up. the cac 40 still fresh. down three-quarters. the ibex down 1.68%. as far as the bund markets are concerned, fresh lower this morning. the gild, we ll bring that up in a minute. we re back over 4% for italian yields for first time and tenure bund yields back down to what we were. no surprise, that s drags the euro down to fresh four-month lows against the dollar. earlier this morning we hit 126.83. we re just above that a moment on the 127 mark. the dollar index is up at four-month highs. it s firm above the 80 mark. what we are seeing, of course, is a big pressure on commodities as well. we have copper down at four-month lows, gold down at four-month lows. bhp saying they lost confidence in the long-term health of the econo
people think the social networking giant is just a passing fad. so warm welcome to the program. we kick off with italy. surprise number from germany first thing this morning. grew much stronger than expected in the first quarter. contraction of minus 0.8%, annual contraction of minus 1.1%. the good news if there is any is that the fourth quarter is unrevised down. so contracting the third consecutive quarterly decline in activity, the steepest contraction for three years. the data weaker than expected, as well. look at the composite figures. so far we ve learned germany was much stronger than expected in the first quarter, france was just about flat. but it did avoid recession. and it comes on top of the spanish data which was weaker than expected, as well. we ll get hollande is being inaugurated as president. gorgeous pictures there. this comes as we ve just been discussing france s comment all but stagnant in the first quarter. you can see the tough challenge he
reports a shocking plunge in its february trade figures. good morning. you re watching worldwide exchange with chloe cho in asia, beccy meehan, and i m jackie deangelis. daylight saving time has kicked in which means we have a one-hour show for you today. meantime let s start by taking a look at futures and how we re shaping up on trade on wall street no clear direction just yet if the markets were to open now the dow higher by two points. the nasdaq lower by about five and the s&p 500 higher by two points as well and, of course, this was after a higher day of u.s. equities, beccq, on friday. boosting some sentiment to the u.s. markets but then that was tempered by the isda ruling that a credit event happened in greece so it will be interesting to see how the undertones of the global market impact us today. indeed. we ll be analyzing all of that throughout the show, of course, here on cnbc so do stay tuned over the next hour for all of that. a quick check on how the eur
europe s ailing economies after pumping ltro money in a the financial system. and we ll speak to the ceo of standard bank first on cnbc as africa s biggest lender by assets sees four-year profits rise by 23%. that s coming up in 30 minutes. a very good morning. you are watching cnbc s worldwide exchange with christine tan. i m ross westgate. jackie will join us later from the united states. greece has seen a strong take-up of its bond swap offer. according to a greek government official speaking to reuters, the pace has been pretty good and the percentage of bondholders agreeing is what they describe as very high. private bondholders have until 2100 cet tonight to sign up for the debt swap that aims to wipe around 75% of the value of their holdings. reports suggest that so is far half of the country s creditors have agreed to participate. the government has 75% of bondholders to take part. it will announce the results at 7:00 cet tomorrow morning, that s 6:00 gmt. the c
asked to take substantially more losses on previous holdings than anticipated. losses on 53.5% of nominal value of their bonds. right now we also have some breaking news coming out. home depot out with its earnings this morning. dow component. 50 cents a share is what it looks like here. i don t have the estimate in front of me. i m not surprised because home depot has been doing well. i think is the stock is up 11%, 11.5% year to date. obviously the resurgence of the housing market. the housing stocks themselves have done quite well. home depot and lowes have done well. people talking about that quote/unquote renovation cycle. so that s been helping stocks. on the top line as well. on the revenue it looks like $16 billion. estimate was for $15.5 billion. yep. but that is a pretty striking beat on the bottom line just based off half a billion dollars. cases in the items in there but that is a nice way to start the week. also some guidance. just taking a look rea