Ready to retrace

EUR/USD

The euro/dollar keeps growing and has already risen close to 1.3900. The dollar demand has been less strong this week, which is partly a result of the lower interest in the US stocks and partly – of the realization that the ECB won’t move in the direction of new incentives, while the EU economy is improving. Regarding stocks, we can see the growing confidence of investors in the inevitability of a retracement in the near future. Besides, lately the core indexes feel difficulty with growth and are trading flat, while volatility indexes have declined to the levels, speaking about a possible more…

EUR redeemed its positions

EUR/USD

The single currency regained its positions after Draghi’s speech last Thursday. Yet, it is not only the merit of the EU officials, who have been saying since the beginning of the week that QE and other ways to ease the monetary policy are merely treated as possible options for the future, rather than as a predetermined scenario, which is simply not highlighted yet. The dollar is pressurized also due to the soft rhetoric of the Fed’s members, who intend to raise the rate when the economy is more ready and who also consider the current policy not transparent enough for the more…

EUR grew due to ECB’s confidence in growth

EUR/USD

The plenty of speeches made by the EU officials yesterday were to the benefit of the single currency. The euro/dollar started growing after Ewald Nowotny had said that the ECB was also seriously considering  consequences of different ways to ease the monetary policy, but didn’t hurry to apply them. Yves Mersch also pointed out in his speech that the economic recovery in the EU was reducing deflation risks. Actually he said exactly the same thing as we had done before the ECB’s meeting last week (‘Don’t wait for Draghi to be mild’). We were mistaken only about the tone of the more…

Draghi did the right thing

EUR/USD

Fortunately we were mistaken about Draghi yesterday. His comments on the rate decision and answers to journalists’ questions made it clear that the ECB is ready for action. As opposed to the press-conference in March, Draghi didn’t sound optimistic. On the contrary he pointed out that the inflation slowdown proved to be an unpleasant surprise for the Committee and said that deflation or even a long period of low inflation is a very dangerous thing, which the Bank is going to combat. He added that various unconventional measures  (expansion of the ECB’s balance sheet via asset purchases, rate cuts and even more…

Don’t wait for Draghi to be mild

EUR/USD

We have a new record of S&P 500 and a new tide of pressure on the single currency. The pair is obviously prevented from going above 1.3800. It was being pushed away from this level since the very beginning of the EU session and after the release of the Final GDP data the euro selling became even more methodical. The final rates proved to be worse than the initial estimates, showing the growth of 0.2% in the fourth quarter of the previous year and the annual rate of 0.4% against the initial 0.3%. France and Germany published their final estimates already more…