Forex trading headlines from the European morning session 8 July

News:

  • Fitch affirms New Zealand rating at AA. Outlook raised to positive
  • ECB’s Noyer says bank deleveraging still an “impediment” to Eurozone growth
  • Spain’s Linde says Eurozone CPI to remain far from the 2% target
  • Germany’s Brinkhaus tells France where to stick their weakening euro idea
  • OECD says leading indicator points to stable growth momentum in developed countries
  • Spain’s Linde says BOS will publish quarterly economic forecast
  • Bank of France sees Q2 GDP growth of +0.2% q/q

Data: UK industrial output May m/m -0.7% vs +0.2% exp

  • German trade balance May sa EUR +18.8 bln vs +16.4 bln exp
  • Swiss CPI June m/m -0.1% vs +0.1% exp
  • French trade balance May sa EUR -4.9bln vs -4.5 bln exp
  • Japanese economy watchers poll June 47.7 vs 45.1 prev
  • Nikkei closes down 0.42% at 15,314.41

We’ve had a decent enough session, albeit with a varied level price action amongst the pairs, as the pound got slapped on weaker output data and the kiwi soared on a Fitch upgrade.

It was a quiet start though with the euro having a little wobble on weaker German trade data and ECB rhetoric that repeated concerns on euro strength. EURUSD fell from 1.3603 to 1.3588 dragging other euro pairs down too before finding a few buyers.

But then ratings agency Fitch came out with an upgraded view of New Zealand and we saw NZDUSD leap to 0.8807 from 0.8765, highs not seen since Aug 2011, before running out of steam and we’re back at 0.8780.

Then awful UK output data hit the pound to send GBPUSD to 1.7086 from 1.7125 and EURGBP to 0.7960 from 0.7942. Similar moves were seen in other pound pairs before buyers returned to the scene and we’ve since drifted back to 1.7118 and 0.7940 with recovery in those other pairs too.

USDJPY has drifted off to the 101.70 support area while USDCHF has mainly been treading water around 0.8940 despite some worryingly weaker CPI data.

AUDUSD finally breached 0.9400 taking a piggy-back ride from the kiwi surge but similarly has retreated and USDCAD has had the morning off around 1.0680 mostly.
A session then that’s provided a little more movement than recently seen and that’s a very welcome relief.