Forex news from the European morning session 24 October 2014
News:
- ECB’s Noyer says France and Italy are lagging in reforms
- EU’s Katainen says Germany’s potential economic growth “far too low”
- UK’s Cameron demands emergency talks over the extra EU contribution
- Italian bank association says it will not be simple to interpret ECB bank stress tests
- Putin and Merkel hopeful of Ukraine gas deal at next round of talks
- Central bank of Russia raises rouble corridor by 40 kopecks
Data:
- Italian retail sales Aug mm SA -0.1% vs +0.2% exp
- September 2014 Italian wage inflation 0.0% vs 0.0% prior m/m
- Italian consumer confidence falls to 101.40 in October
- Nikkei closes up +1.01% at 15,291.64
It’s been a scrappy end to the week but limited action and opportunity but we’ve had some decent movement for the pound after Q3 GDP first reading came in on expectation
The intial reaction was one of relief and we saw a rally on GBPUSD to 1.6057 from 1.6030 but then another sharp move through 1.6060 offers triggering stops to 1.6073 in a rush only to fail at the next tranche of offers from 1.6075. We’ve since been back to 1.6025 with EURGBP rallying to test 0.7900 having dipped to 0.7872 after the data. A smilar pattern was seen across pound pairs with most core pairs pinned in tight ranges
EURUSD had an early run up to 1.2665 before running out of steam and has been trading around 1.2645 while USDJPY had its own run to 108.25 from 107.95 before settling back around 108.15. USDCHF has been the usual slave to EURUSD moves and barely troubled the scorers
USDCAD had a dip to 1.1213 from 1.1232 and AUDUSD has been supported but still unable to challenge 0.8800 ahead of a large option expiry today while NZDUSD has been quiet between 0.7825-45.
So not an entirely inspiring session but still with opportunities nonetheless
