Forex trading news and economic data headlines 19 April 2017

News:

  • EU's Juncker tells May that Brexit talks will begin after 8 June election
  • UK's May says election will help strengthen position in EU Brexit talks
  • When sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand
  • What happens now as the pound enjoys some calm after the storm?
  • Mnuchin says Trump "absolutely not" trying to talk down the US dollar
  • It's not too early to have a discussion on ECB policy says ECB's Hansson
  • Eurozone growth and inflation could encourage the ECB to start normalising policy
  • China says it has "appropriately" relaxed management of cross-border capital controls
  • BMW expects China sales growth to be around 10 percent this year
  • China - Minsheng Banking investigated in 3 bn yuan fraud case
  • Moody's on Turkey: Referendum outcome unlikely to ease political uncertainty
  • OPEC/non-OPEC to hold meeting on 25 May in Vienna
  • Australia's Ciobo says it's far too early to call the TPP dead
  • USDJPY has a look at 109.00 as it tries to work out a range
  • More option expiries of note this week 20-21 April
  • Option expiries for the 10 am NY cut today 19 April
  • Nikkei 225 closes up +0.07% at 18,432.20

Data:

  • March 2017 Eurozone CPI final 1.5% vs 1.5% exp y/y
  • Eurozone February SA global trade balance EUR 19.2bln vs 18.0bln exp
  • Italy February global trade balance EUR 1.884bln vs -575m prev

It's been a far quieter session yesterday as bots and traders try to make sense of the events of the past 24 hours.

Tight ranges have prevailed across all major pairs and the pound has settled down albeit still underpinned after it's spike last night in late NY trading.

GBPUSD opened up around 1.2825 and had a little look lower and higher but nothing of note and the same can be said of other GBP pairs.

USDJPY has had a look at 109.00 from 108.70 and that's helped underpin JPY pairs and put the bid under core pairs with EURUSD finding demand into 107.10 but spending most of its time around 1.0725

AUDUSD has remained on the back foot but survived a test of 0.7500 in Asia and has crawled back up to 0.7525 as I type helped by some AUDJPY demand. USDCAD similarly found some buy interest to 1.3438 but tempered by CADJPY supply.

Equities have made a few gains, apart from the FTSE which is still suffering from the GBP rally, and that has helped the greater risk sentiment/yen selling.

Not a lot on the data front to be concerned with but we do have some CB talking heads starting with ECB's Coeure at the top of the hour.