Forex trading headlines for the European morning session 2 October
- UK Markit/CIPS construction PMI sept 58.9 vs 59.2 59.1 prev. Detail here
- Italian PM Letta officially calls for confidence motion
- Italian PM Letta says future of govt separate from Berlusconi problems
- PDL to vote against Letta says Berlusconi
- UK PM Cameron says debt crisis not over
- BOE’s Fisher sees no UK housing bubble
- Nikkei closes down 2.17% at 14,170.49
- EU’s Van Rompey says banking union slowly becoming a reality
We’ve had an indifferent session with little in the way of rhetoric and data, but with a Nikkei slap effect early on and still plenty going on in Italy to keep us on our toes.
The Nikkei had another negative session which weighed on an already heavy yen-pair scenario. USDJPY failed to respond to any Nikkei rallies and then continued to head lower, breaking down through strong support at 97.50 to trigger stops and testing the next wave of buy orders at 97.25.
Japanese names were seen buying EURJPY in the dips down to 131.50 and this applied the brakes across the board but the rallies have looked less than convincing since.
The pound came in for a little slap after weaker than expected construction PMI data but soon recovered. GBPUSD dipped to 1.6193 then bounced back to 1.6220 only to fall back to 1.6192 as I type. EURGBP found some early buyers but has spent most of the session around 0.8345.
EURUSD has found decent support in the dip to 1.3500 coinciding with the EURJPY demand and has since been mostly around 1.3520 after rallying on hopes of the Italian govt surviving a confidence vote.
The aussie $ had another look downstairs after the weaker o/n data with AUDUSD being led/forced down by AUDJPY but buyers have returned to stem further falls for the moment.
ECB announcement is out shortly followed by the always-anticipated press conference at 12.30 GMT. No fireworks expected, but here at ForexLive we never say never !