Forex news for North American trade on January 30, 2018:
- US January consumer confidence 125.4 vs 123.0 expected
- US November Case-Shiller 20-city house price index +6.41% vs +6.30% y/y expected
- Trump may try to prosecute special counsel Mueller - report
- Facebook bans ads promoting cryptocurrencies
- Bitfinex and Tether said to be subpoenaed by CFTC
- ECB's Weidmann: German current account surplus will shrink amid higher investment
- BOE's Carney: Expect inflation will remain above 2% in near future
- Vlieghe reappointed to BOE MPC
- Mnuchin: I see 3% growth in the US for some time
- Exxon: We plan to triple Permian basin shale production by 2025
- Mnuchin: Supports a strong dollar in the long-term interest of US
- BOE's Carney: Sees pickup in UK investment in 2019
- ECB's Knot: Confident inflation will rise to target
- SEC seizes the assets of an ICO that claimed to raise $600 million
Markets:
- Gold down $2 to $1338
- Bitcoin down $1105 to $10,105
- S&P 500 down 31 points to 2822
- US 10-year yields down 2.72%
- GBP leads, AUD lags
Month end, month end, month end.
From time to time, you get a bit of a flight-to-quality in the stock market with the VIX jumping and commodities taking a bit of a dive. But FX and bonds aren't playing along.
Often that's telling. It says that nothing fundamental has changed and that flows or other factors are probably involved. It's also a reminder that the FX market hasn't been too impressed with the stock move anyway, so the disconnect is nothing new.
In any case, you can't ignore that it's month end and that a huge rebalancing is underway.
So what happened today aside from stocks and commodities? Not much. EUR/USD started at 1.2400 and finished there with a rise to 1.2450 and a dip down to 1.2380 in the mix. German inflation was shrugged off and so was the US data.
Carney spoke but that didn't leave much of impression on the currency, which bounced nicely to finish the dat at 1.4140 from a low of 1.1390.
USD/JPY continues to ignore the breakout in bonds and fell as low as 108.42 before climb to 108.75 later.
Commodity FX didn't do much but crypto certainly did. The report about a subpoena at Bitfinex sent a chill through the market but after a bit of panic selling, the market settled fairly quickly.
We'll have to wait for the next shoe to drop.
