EUR/usd
Selling in the stock markets and among risk-sensitive currencies continued for most part of the day yesterday. The American indices received some small support only at the beginning of trading in Asia, when speculations grew on the news about possible incentives from China's government. Technically the stock markets, following Forex, have returned to the levels which were observed before the QE3 announcement. However, the charts clearly show that the market has to go down as much again to get to the levels where it was before draghi. Thus, the situation looks as follows: speculators, who have staked on the growth of markets, are still making a profit. The stock exchanges have slightly retraced from the 5-year highs, and the whole rally since early July has increased the S&P 500 index by 13.6%. EUR/USD hit its lows in the second decade of July and since then has grown by almost 9 big figures, or by over 7%. Converting it into annual growth rate terms, we'll get almost similar annual rates. The yield from the beginning of the rally till now exceeds 40%. Now many talk that Spain faces high risks, which spring up because some regions express their desire to disintegrate. At least in the foreseeable future we don't think that it will happen, though Catalonia insists on holding pre-term regional elections and on considering the issue of higher independence or even autonomy. All this instability brings closer the day when Spain will finally have to make an official request for a bailout, which will automatically involve the ECB in buying of this country's government bonds and reduce the yield for the whole bloc of the southern countries. If the markets get some frightening news regarding Spain, it's quite likely that already today the single currency will go through a test of its 200-day MA, which is now at 1.2825. We'll take the risk and make a bet that the euro will remain above this level, even if it touches it.
EUR/GBP
Though the current performance of the pound is slacker than that of the dollar, traders again seem to favour EUR/GBP as a safe-haven instead of the troubled euro. Over the last three days EUR/GBP has been sliding down with less confidence than a week ago, but still closed out the trading days negative. Now trading is close to 0.7950, which is not very far from the levels of the beginning of the month (0.7910).
USD/JPY
Selling of the Japanese yen has stalled around 77.70. The currency has been consolidating here for the last two days. Against the traditional correlation, yesterday's selling of risky assets didn't produce any significant demand for the yen. On the contrary, at some point the yen even was depreciating against the dollar and USD/JPY grew to 77.90. Unfortunately, we can't expect any large fluctuations from the pair. At such low levels and with such a high demand for safety, the yen grows very cautiously and for a very short time.
gold
Yesterday Gold received a hard blow, having lost at some point about $30 of its price. By now the metal has recouped more than a half of yesterday's losses, however you should be cautious. Gold has been vainly trying to break above 1780 in the last few days, yet the daily highs have been getting lower day by day (except for the upsurge on September 21). Probably, this instrument will suffer a longer consolidation than was expected before.
