Bears keep putting pressure

EUR/USD

Wall Street didn’t manage to recover fully after Thursday’s sellout. During the US session selling was still heavy as investors couldn’t find any support in the fresh corporate reports. The disappointment with the indicators of technology companies spread to other sectors as well. Actually, the reports fall short of the investors’ high expectations, which picture them strong enough to justify the overrated stocks and fight the negative consequences of the Fed’s policy toughening. Already now the bonds are increasing their yields, which makes them a bit more attractive, depriving the stock market of the growth potential. The single currency seems to more…

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…

Futile volatility

EUR/USD

The unemployment statistics proved to be relatively good, but since for the most part they met the expectations, the market didn’t see any significant volatility. The US employers increased the number of jobs by 192K in March against the consensus forecast of 199K. Against expectations, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.7%, but this is not bad news as the participation rate grew from 63.0% to 63.2%. Average weekly hours grew more than expected, from 34.3 to 34.5 hr. The current rate already corresponds to the average pre-crisis rates, so we can already speak about returning to the normal workweek schedule more…