Forex news, data and trading headlines 22 July 2015

  • May 2015 Japan all industry activity index -0.5% vs -0.6% exp m.m
  • June 2015 Japan supermarket sales 0.3% vs 5.7% prior y/y
  • June 2015 Japan machine tool orders final 6.6% vs 6.6% prior
  • July 2015 France business climate index 102 vs 100 exp
  • May 2015 Italy industrial orders -2.5% vs 5.4% prior
  • May 2015 Italy retail sales -0.1% vs 0.0% exp m/m
  • Japanese government cuts inflation outlook to 0.6% from 1.4% for FY2015
  • Has anyone forgotten about Greece?

The BOE

  • BOE's Miles: The time to normalise policy is coming
  • Bank of England MPC votes 9-0 to keep rates unchanged
  • Greece had the Bank of England running scared

The European session snapped into action when I found an article from departing BOE and MPC man David Miles tucked away in the bowels of the interwebs. There wasn't anything really different from his prior comments last week but the story ended with a line insinuating that he would not go meekly into the night at the end of his tenure, having never voted for a rate change. Once the rest of the market caught up with the story the pound saw it as a hawkish remark, and coming a few hours before the MPC minutes decided that the risk of a change in the voting pattern had increased anGBPUSD popped a quick 40 pips to 1.5613. As other traders caught up we then moved to 1.5625 before settling ahead of the actual release

The minutes came out 9-0 in favour for keeping rates unchanged and the initial disappointment drop took us to 1.5582 before the details of the minutes took us back up to 1.5647. Greece looked to be the deciding factor in keeping the hawks grounded and without it the vote would have been even finer balanced. As we know Greece is off the front page, for now so the pound will likely keep its attention squarely focused on the August meeting

The action was all in the pound while other currencies watched the show

EURUSD might have one eye on today's Greek vote on part two of the reform pledge made to the Eurogroup last week. 51 pips door to door has been the range between 1.0916 and 1.0967 with not a lot going on. Italian data was ignored, which is probably for the best as it wasn't the greatest numbers out of Italy ever. Overnight and early session support at 1.0920 has been broken as I type and that might see us move lower towards 1.0900

USDJPY wasn't shaken by a CPI mark down by the Japanese government, nor that they'll miss hitting a surplus in FY2020. We're getting a little bid on as I type and are looking to break above the early session resistance at 123.85/90. The range there has been 123.57-89

Everywhere else it's been pretty quiet all things considered. NZDUSD is looking steady at 0.6613 ahead of the RBNZ rate decision later today. Check out our two previews

We're a bit light on data in the US again today but that didn't stop us seeing some decent action yesterday. Let's hope we get more of the same