EUR/usd
The euro is trying to catch up with the growth of other currencies against the dollar, but all this looks funny or even dangerous for those who stake on growth of the single currency. Yesterday eurusd managed to rise from the daily low of 1.3150 and hit the high at 1.3217. As a result, the movement made less than 70pips and by now half of this growth has already been recouped as trading is again below 1.3200. Actually, there wasn't any particular reason for growth and the market players mainly ignored the news as the published stats represented a clear signal neither for the euro nor for the dollar. Final Services PMI for Europe in August proved to be contradictory. On the one hand, expectations for Spain were surpassed and the rates for France and Germany were revised up, but on the other hand, Italy didn't make it to the expected rate and the whole euro zone seems to be doing worse than estimated a couple of weeks ago. It's not very good, but anyway the composite index of regional activity in August showed the highest rate for over two years and the services sector entered the zone of growth after a year and a half of shrinkage. So even disappointment in some aspects of statistics shouldn't diminish the effect of positive changes. As expected from the US trade balance, the deficit was corrected from $34.5bln in June to 39.1bln. The forecasted rate made 38.7bln, so as we see the actual data didn't differ much from the expected level. Soon after the release of this news the dollar bulls played with the market, pretending that they were ready to retreat and let the single currency go above 1.3200. The Beige Book, published a bit later, showed that from June till late August growth varied from modest to moderate. There was no significant improvement in comparison with the previous estimate, which supported growth in the stock exchanges as the fear of the stimulus rollback by the Fed subsided. The regional review has showed that Americans are now spending more on mortgages and cars, despite the rise in interest rates, and have also increased expenditures on tourism and leisure time activities. On the whole, as we have already mentioned, September is too early for the beginning of the stimulus rollback.
GBP/USD
The British PMI hit a hat-trick. All the three indicators are at multi-month or even multi-year highs now. The services sector data, published yesterday, proved to be above the previous levels, refusing to correct as was expected by many. It means that business activity in the services sector of the country was growing at the highest pace for over six years, which once again supported a rally in the British currency. Today's agenda contains the BOE's decision on the interest rate and here there is a risk that Carney will try to put pressure on the markets, assuring them that he will maintain the rates longer than expected by the market participants.
USD/JPY
The interest rate decision of the BOJ didn't produce any agitation in the markets as it didn't contain any new information. Aims and means remained the same. Anyway, growth of stock exchanges led to slight weakening of the yen, taking it a step closer to 100, the high was set at 99.97.
AUD/USD
aussie-bulls kept pushing the pair up all through the day. As a result, audusd stopped 15pips away from 0.9200. All in all, in the course of the last rally since the beginning of the week the pair has moved forward by about 4 figures. And it is still not clear if it will be strong enough to continue growing today and tomorrow.
