Forex news from the European morning session 5 January 2015
News:
- German government says they expect Greece to stick to its commitments
- ECB’s Praet repeats that he sees risk of negative inflation rates in coming months
- Hollande says France can not continue with weak growth
- EU cracks the first jokes of 2015
Data:
- December 2014 UK Markit/CIPS construction PMI 57.6 vs 59.0 exp
- Spanish unemployment Dec mm -1.43%
- Saxony CPI Dec mm +0.2% vs -0.1% prev
- Hesse CPI Dec yy 0.0% vs +0.5% prev. Other regionals here too
- North Rhine Westphalia Dec CPI yy +0.1% vs +0.7%
- January 2014 Eurozone sentix index 0.9 vs -1.0 exp
- Swiss PMI Dec 54.0 vs 52.8 exp
- Nikkei 225 closes down -0.24% at 17, 408.71
After the USD surge in early Asia we saw some attempt at a correction as Europe set out fully staffed into 2015, but the respite didn’t last long
EURUSD had an early move on 1.2000 but failed above 1.1980 as weaker regional German yy CPI capped the rally and we’ve fallen back to 1.1905 while GBPUSD had couple of attempts to hold gains above 1.5300 only to fall again to 1.5240
USDCHF fell to 1.0035 before rallying again as EURUSD fell and EURCHF held above 1.2010 but offers at 1.0100 have capped that move so far while USDJPY has struggled to make further headway above 120.50 with yen pairs under pressure while core pairs continue to decline
USDCAD had an offer in it early on but then rallied above 1.1800 again from 1.1767 on falling oil prices before dipping back under 1.1790 while AUDUD and NZDUSD have been on the back foot for most the session
Traders are still understandably cautious not only after the Asian moves but also not wanting to get burnt too early into 2015. These are fractious times and they’ll be around for a while yet.