Forex trading headlines from the European morning session 16 January 2014
- Fitch affirms the Netherlands long-term rating at AAA
- Japan’s department store sales Dec y/y +2.4% vs +1.7% prev
- S&P revises Portugal’s sovereign credit outlook to negative
- Nikkei closes down 0.08% at 15,734.46
- French budget balance Nov EUR -86.96 bln vs -86.05 bln prev
- Swiss producer/import price Dec m/m 0.0% vs +0.1% exp
- Chinese bank regulator tells banks to curb reliance on short-term funding
- ECB’s Knot says ECB has done all it could do during crisis
- Spain’s bad loans ratio rises to 13.08% in November
- December 2013 UK retail sales 2.6% vs 0.4% exp m/m
- PBOC tells banks not to get carried away
- Commerzbank sees the ECB taking the axe to interest rates in March
- A new record written on ForexLive twitter followers & a big thank you
- GE sees good growth strength in the US but a mixed bag in Europe
A sedate start to Friday jumped into life when the UK positively, remarkably, surprisingly, absolutely smashed the retail sales numbers. Cable was doing one of it’s front running warm ups running up 30 pips into the release but not even they expected the numbers ot come out as strongly as they did. Any thoughts of the fronties sucking in some easy retail chasing money was thrown out the window as we smacked up 100 pips from 1.6345. All other GBP pairs paint a similar straight line on the charts and we continue to sit around the highs for the sterling moves.
GBP/JPY has been up over 130 pips to 171.87 from 170.50 and GBP/CHF has hit a ton as well. EUR/GBP has lost over 50 pips to 0.8260 but has recovered 10.
It’s been a one man party for the UK (but we don’t care) as everywhere else is half asleep in tight ranges.
USD/JPY is looking slightly more bid than it did when I fired up the screens but 104.20/47 has been the range since Eamonn hit the pub.
EUR/USD has taken another drop below 1.3600 but has only managed 1.3593 as a low so far that and 1.3621 has top and tailed the range this morning.
AUD/USD still has the pulse of someone who has fallen off of Ayers rock then climbed back up and fell off again. The huge bounce from yesterdays falls managed to take us to 0.8825 but we’ve slid back below 0.88 once more. There’s little emphasis to do anything with this pair at the moment. The bears are happy to stand guard while the bulls run around like headless chickens bumping into each other and not knowing what to do.
