Geopolitics strikes at the markets

EUR/USD

The safe assets are again appreciating. At night Obama permitted air strikes at Iraq, which certainly intensified the geopolitical tension in Eurasia. Ukraine and Russia, Gaza and Israel, Syria and Libya – all these countries are a cause for concern not only among cautious traders already. During yesterday’s press-conference the ECB President Mario Draghi often mentioned sharp strengthening of the geopolitical risks in the region, which tells negatively on the EU economy and puts pressure on the euro. Most likely, the negative, caused by the restriction of the commodity and money flow due to the EU sanctions and Russia’s counter measures, more…

Germany can’t save everyone

EUR/USD

Italy is again suffering recession. It became obvious after yesterday’s release of the Prelim PMI data for the second quarter. The statistics indicated the economic slowdown by 0.2% in 2Q after the decline by 0.1% in 1Q. Actually, over the last three years Italy reported only one quarter of growth – the last quarter of 2013. All the rest of the time the economy was suffering sluggish weakening. Even some decrease in the unemployment rate since the beginning of the year doesn’t save the situation. 12.3% is still too high to rely on the growth of consumer activity. Even the foreign more…

Kiwi cannot fly

EUR/USD

Another attack of bears pushed the single currency down against the US dollar and the British pound yesterday. The reason for the pair’s decline below the previous low was formally in the divergence of fundamental statistics. The final EU Services PMIs generally didn’t reach the preceding and forecasted rates. The only exception was Germany, whose PMI was raised from 56.6 to 56.7, but even there the Composite PMI was revised down because of the reduction of the Manufacturing PMI. Upon the whole the EU services sector is demonstrating the most active growth since May 2011, but the fact that the index more…

Another step towards normalization in the USA

EUR/USD

Yesterday EURUSD was drifting within a rather narrow trading range in the absence of news. Over the day the pair went down just by 10 pips to 1.3420, though upon the whole bears seemed to be stronger. The thing is that the intraday low was at 1.3408 while the high was near the daily open. In the European news background only the Sentix Investor Confidence is of interest – it was poor due to the increased geopolitical risks in the region (Ukraine, Iraq, Gaza Strip). The rate fell down to the levels reported a year ago, albeit remained positive. It is more…

Suspension of USD’s rally

EUR/USD

The employment statistics proved to less favourable than expected. The labour market created 209K of jobs instead of the expected 230. The private sector employment increased by 198K against the forecasted growth by 225K. The average earnings haven’t grown against the previous month, which anyway hasn’t posed an obstacle for growth of the annual rate from 1.9% to 2.0%. But still it is worse than the supposed acceleration to 2.2%. It seems that employers don’t hurry to raise earnings despite the impressive increase in the number of jobs. Possibly, the reason is that there is a huge number of potential workers, more…