Holiday trading to keep markets flat

The European Central Bank's targeted long term refinancing operations saw European banks take up 7.3 billion Euros in loans, less than the 18.3 billion Euros that were borrowed in December. The TLTRO was launched to help banks to boosting lending to consumers and is into its seventh round of lending. In total, European banks have taken a total of 426 billion Euros since the program was launched in 2014. Yesterday's TLTRO operation comes under the old rules but starting June, the TLTRO-II will be launched where the ECB will pay banks to take the loans to boost lending.

The weekly jobless claims in the US came to a seasonally adjusted 265k for the week ending March 18th, up 6k from the previous week's revised figure of 259k, according to data from the US labor department. The weekly jobless claims, marks a 55th consecutive week of trending below the 300k mark staying consistent with the improving US labor market. However, offsetting the positive data was US durable goods orders which fell -2.80% in February, matching estimates. Previous month's durable goods orders were revised lower from 4.90% to 4.20% on the headline while core durable goods orders were revised from 1.80% to 1.20%. The declines came with a fall in civilian airline orders which fell -27.10% from January and dwindling military aircraft orders during the month. The weak durable goods orders pointed to the softness in the US manufacturing sector.