Forex news for New York trading on Friday, October 6, 2017

In other markets today:

  • Spot gold is trading at $1284.91, up $8.30. A general flight into safety bid
  • WTI crude oil is traing up $0.24 or +0.49% to $49.53
  • US stocks are ending the session in the red. The Dow and Nasdaq did make new record intraday highs at 6599.34 and 22803.37 respectively but are ending the day in the red. The S&P fell short of its record high. The S&P closed down -4.60 points or -0.18%. The Nasdaq closed down -10.45 points or -0.16%. The Dow is ending down -12.6 points or -0.06%

Today was the Thanksgiving Day holiday in Canada and in the USA it was Columbus Day. The stock market was open as were commodity futures but the bond market in the US was closed and there was no news and no headlines from Fed officials and President Trump today. So the markets just wandered.

The winner today was the GBP. It rose against all the major currencies, but in the North American session, it gave up some of the trend gains before rebounding a bit into the close. The NZD was the weakest. The USD was little changed against most of the major currencies with the exception of the moves against the GBP (-0.61%) and the NZD (+0.34%).

The EURUSD got some support in the NA session from more hawkish comments from ECB Lautenschläger. The EURUSD was trading near low levels for the day at 1.1724 and eventually took out the high for the day and traded above the 200 hour MA at 1.17504. The pair is ending just below that MA level at 1.1748 into the close.

The USDJPY lost some ground in the last few hours of trading after stocks turned more to the downside, but like the EURUSD, it too stalled at the 112.50 level before bouncing about 10-12 pips into the close.

For the GBPUSD, the pair rallied into the NY session but stalled near the 100 hour MA (currently at 1.31636). The price moved above that MA early in the NY session but stalled and spent the rest of the session below the level. In the new trading day, that MA will be a key ceiling to stay below if the sellers are to remain in control.