Oil has cleanly broken the $50 level badly damaging the “era of good feeling “, or maybe more accurately the” two weeks of good feeling”, that helped lift crude and many other commodities out of a depression-like mentality. Risk aversion is running high across the board today as the dollar strengthens, stocks weaken and commodities stumble.
EUR/USD continues to consolidate on the 1.3140s while USD/JPY gets a dose of adrenaline, surging to 97.40/45. Stops above 97.15 kicked in after demand at the 16:00 GMT London fixing.
Seasonally, March 31 is a strong day for the JPY as last-minute repatriation is cleaned up. Perhaps some tried to front-run that phenomenon and are getting squeezed out as the dollar rallies.
97.85/95 is next resistance of note on the short-term charts.
