Speculators seek to sell USD prior to Yellen’s speech

EUR/USD

Speeches of Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chairwoman, are often full of cautious comments and are generally treated by the markets as rather dovish. Being just a certified candidate for chair of the Fed, she already maintained a softer stance than Ben Bernanke, so the markets even staked that her advent would help to stop QE reduction. This year she has aroused a fresh tide of anxiety regarding the policy toughening when pointing out that unemployment below 6.5% wouldn’t be a reason to consider raising the rates. Instead the Fed  began to focus on a wide range of employment indicators. Thus, Janet more…

Germany can’t save everyone

EUR/USD

Italy is again suffering recession. It became obvious after yesterday’s release of the Prelim PMI data for the second quarter. The statistics indicated the economic slowdown by 0.2% in 2Q after the decline by 0.1% in 1Q. Actually, over the last three years Italy reported only one quarter of growth – the last quarter of 2013. All the rest of the time the economy was suffering sluggish weakening. Even some decrease in the unemployment rate since the beginning of the year doesn’t save the situation. 12.3% is still too high to rely on the growth of consumer activity. Even the foreign more…

Another step towards normalization in the USA

EUR/USD

Yesterday EURUSD was drifting within a rather narrow trading range in the absence of news. Over the day the pair went down just by 10 pips to 1.3420, though upon the whole bears seemed to be stronger. The thing is that the intraday low was at 1.3408 while the high was near the daily open. In the European news background only the Sentix Investor Confidence is of interest – it was poor due to the increased geopolitical risks in the region (Ukraine, Iraq, Gaza Strip). The rate fell down to the levels reported a year ago, albeit remained positive. It is more…

Suspension of USD’s rally

EUR/USD

The employment statistics proved to less favourable than expected. The labour market created 209K of jobs instead of the expected 230. The private sector employment increased by 198K against the forecasted growth by 225K. The average earnings haven’t grown against the previous month, which anyway hasn’t posed an obstacle for growth of the annual rate from 1.9% to 2.0%. But still it is worse than the supposed acceleration to 2.2%. It seems that employers don’t hurry to raise earnings despite the impressive increase in the number of jobs. Possibly, the reason is that there is a huge number of potential workers, more…

Fundamental strength of USD

EUR/USD

The US dollar keeps recouping its losses. It is remarkable that it is growing not only against the euro, but across the whole board. We can even say that the single currency looked steadier than many others yesterday. Thus, EURUSD hit 1.3400 this morning. And this is the lowest levels since last November. Actually, we can already speak about the beginning of a rally in USD. And behind it there are perfect macroeconomic statistics. Yet, it is still disputable if the Fed’s policy will lag behind these data. In addition to the news which feeds USD’s strength, yesterday there was a more…