Optimism up – USD down

EUR/USD

The market lingered for a while, but eventually came to the conclusion that we described in our previous review. The Fed is expected to extend QE in order to reduce the pernicious effect of the Operation Twist expiry at the end of the year and avert the possible negative consequences of the fiscal cliff.  Actually, the US congressmen are lucky to have this kind “Helicopter Ben”, who is always ready to come to the rescue and ease the pain from their own irresolution and failures. For comparison, the ECB’s head, Mario Draghi, agrees to support the financial markets of particular countries more…

Do the markets really believe that QE won’t be extended?

EUR/USD

Friday’s US payrolls were quite favourable. They showed a 146K growth against everybody’s expectations that the storm would spoil the statistics and wouldn’t let the indicator go above 100K. Yet, the report was not all positive – last month’s data were revised down (from 171K down to 138K). The decrease in the work force looks disturbing. This is exactly the factor, which helped the official unemployment rate drop from 7.9% to 7.7%. Yet, it will hardly arouse any strong optimism in the market. America is still suffering long-term unemployment: on average jobseekers cannot find a job for about 40 weeks (a more…

Holiday pessimism in Europe

EUR/USD

It’s a funny thing – the market is teeming with moves in various directions. The EU currencies (EUR and GBP) suffered a lot yesterday. Oil is going down in price, while the stock market has grown just like other risky assets. No matter how illogical this move is, there are still some signs that the markets are getting back to reality. So, yesterday the single currency dropped down after the ECB’s revision of the EU economic growth outlook. Mr. Draghi was rather pessimistic in his comments: on average the European economy is forecasted to shrink by 0.3% in 2013. Yet, as more…

The higher we grow, the faster we fall

EUR/USD

The bears are trying to grab the markets in their paws. Yesterday the common currency didn’t have even a single chance to test 1.3140. The market reversed at 1.3125. Yet, it doesn’t change anything now. As has already been mentioned, the recent sharp upsurge from time to time stumbled upon the short-term selling, after which players again started buying the single currency. But this time the decline is smoother and there isn’t any sound reason on the euro’s side. Now it’s all about the dollar. The latter started appreciating in many asset classes. And largely it is a result of the more…

Unsteady upturn

EUR/USD

The markets keep going up, albeit rather unsteadily. The common currency is systematically purchased against the dollar. This week the slope of the curve is equal to the one, which was observed in the previous three weeks. Yet, so far there hasn’t been even a single attempt to break lower, as it was one, two and three weeks ago. However, we should mention that opportunities for such a retracement will be quite many in the coming days. The major risk is posed by the ECB’s meeting with the further press-conference of Draghi, scheduled for tomorrow. Regarding the USA, the ADP employment more…