Forex trading headlines from the European morning session 8 August
News:
- BOJ’s Kuroda says there is no reason for Yen strength
- BOJ’s Kuroda says Japanese economy to continue moderate recovery
- BOJ’s Kuroda says geo-political risk is rising
- BOF sees Q3 GDP growth of +0.2%
- PBOC says they will exit day to day forex intervention
- Japan’s GPIF says it’s changed governance rules on portfolio decisions
- OPEC reduces 2014 global oil demand forecast by 30k bpd to 1.1mln bpd
Data:
- UK trade balance June GBP – 9.4 bln vs -8.8 bln exp
- German trade balance June sa EUR +16.2 bln vs +17.5 bln exp
- French industrial output June m/m +1.3% vs +1.0% exp
- Swiss unemployment rate adj 3.2% as exp
- Japanese economy watchers poll July 51.3 vs 48.5 exp
- China’s retail auto sales July y/y +11.5%
- Nikkei closes down 2.98% at 14,778.37
The Obama-led equity market jitters in the Asian market gave us some early action with a sharp USD sell-off but since then we’ve been in tight mode
The spike lower saw USDCHF down to 0.9046 from 0.9078, and USDJPY down to 101.51 from 101.72 but both pairs found the bids down there tough to crack and we were soon rallying back 20 pips on both.EURUSD took off from 1.3365 to 1.3409 as EURCHF stood still at 1.2130 but just as quickly was back down at 1.3385. Large option expiries at 1.3400 will be having impact
Cable was more reluctant to join in bouncing only to 1.6824 from 1.6808 and was not going to need much encouragement to finally pop the bids at 1.6800 which it duly did posting lows of 1.6796 before bouncing to 1.6815. Awful UK trade balance data made little initial impact but the pair has made no gains since and dribbled back to 1.6804
EURGBP has looked bid since the EURUSD rally but still has the offers from 0.7985 casting their shadow and we’ve been camped around 0.7970 while EURJPY has also picked up a bid to test offers at 136.50 from 135.90. That pair has given a further bid to USDJPY which has now taken out a few offers at 101.80 to post 101.95 as I type.
AUDUSD and NZDUSD have had a quiet session as core pairs but will have seen action on the crosses while USDCAD stands at 1.0924 poised for the jobs report coming up soon
A decent enough session then that has provided some good opportunities and we can expect some more before the week is out.