EUR/usd
As expected, negotiations over the Greek debt-restructuring have proved to be not an easy matter. As has been reported, there isn't any certain agreement on the issue so far. At the opening of the week the euro fell to 1.2878 against Friday's closing level of 1.2930. The deteriorating economic environment now requires more than a 50% haircut from private investors. Lenders, in their turn, claim that they offer the maximum of what they can give. Not long ago this weekend was considered to be the deadline for the agreement to be reached. But as happened many times before, the policymakers have exceeded the allotted time, still hoping that if they do nothing, the situation will somehow resolve on its own. It would be possible if the debt crisis was merely of the speculative character. In this case, short positions would be closed at some point and everything would be all right again. Probably the situation was like this in spring of 2010, as the key eurozone economies were growing at the time. But now it is different, figures from Germany and the eurozone as a whole are expected to demonstrate a sharp decline for 4Q 2011 and at least 1Q 2012. From the technical viewpoint, the single currency is still outside the downtrend channel, which may mark the tendency for the upward reversal. But even a positive technical picture needs to be proved by fundamental factors. Until now, news from Europe is all about reassuring promises and discouraging facts about failed negotiations.
GBP/USD
On Friday the British pound soared to 1.5550 as a result of triggering stop-losses. Besides, unsuccessful negotiations in the euro area, weighing heavily on the euro, didn't produce any conspicuous effect on the ratio of the pound to the dollar – the pair still remained close to this level. There won't be any vital statistics from Britain today, so the pair will be influenced by reports from Europe. Apart from the negotiations over Greece, the market will also focus on France's auctions. If the country places its bonds successfully, it will support the single currency and will also trigger off the EUR/GBP growth.
AUD/USD
Despite caution in the market, the Australian dollar is still in demand. It looks as though the aussie bulls had decided to drive the pair up to 1.05. However, it's rather dubious whether they are really strong enough to do that. The technical picture speaks well for the further growth, though: the pair climbed above its 200-day MA, broke the resistance of the downtrend, passing through the highs of July 27 and October 27. Should stock markets continue to grow and gold keeps rising as well, Aussie has every chance to get up to 1.07 in the near-term and then reverse.
Gold
Gold demonstrates a small but steady growth from the beginning of January. While Europe is suffering from the governments' unwillingness to make concessions to each other, the Chinese have entered a new year. These celebrations are quite long and gold enjoys a very high demand during them. And as the stock of the physical metal decreases, the gold quotations in stock markets rise. Traditionally, the upward trend of gold still holds during spring. In addition, the price of gold has fallen significantly at the end of 2011, which makes purchases from the current levels of 1670 highly probable.
