The USD is stronger
As the North American session begins the CHF is the strongest and the AUD is the weakest of the major currencies. The USD is tilting to the upside with modest gains vs the EUR, JPY, CAD, AUD and NZD and declines vs the GBP and CHF. The FOMC begins their 2-day meeting with the backdrop of commodities higher and the economy waking from the pandemic. The BOJ raised their outlook but kept stimulus the same. The FOMC meeting will not have any updates to the dot plot of economic projections. So the focus will be on the statement and what Chair Powell says at his press conference. The decision will be at 2 PM ET tomorrow with the press conference starting at 2:30 PM ET. Today there will be Case Schiller house data at 9 AM ET, Consumer confidence and Richmond Fed Manufacturing index at 10 AM ET. The treasury will auction 7 year notes at 1 PM. Amgen, Texas Instruments, Eli Lilly, General Electric, Raytheon, 3M report earnings before the stock market opens. The likes of Microsoft, Alphabet, Starbucks, Visa, and AMD report after the close. Later this week, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and others will all report.
Looking at the ranges and changes, the I the low trading ranges are relatively modest with most of the majors below 39 pips and well below the 22 day averages (the GBPUSD has a 58 it trading range). The GBPUSD has spiked back higher over the last few hours. UK retailers reported the sharpest upturn in sales since 2018 as non-essential shops were allowed to reopen during the month, with the headline reading jumping to is highest level since September 2018. The pair is positive on the day after being down as much at 40 pips at the lows. The other GBP pairs has seen rebounds in the GBP as well. The NZDUSD and AUDUSD are both lower after rising yesterday. The AUDUSD rose to test the high from last week but found sellers ag. the level at 0.78152 (currently at 0.77837). The NZDUSD retrtaced back toward its 100 hour MA at 0.71979 (the low reached 0.7200), but has seen a bounce back rebound to 0.7227.
In other markets:
- Spot gold is trading near unchanged at $1781.43
- spot silver is trading near unchanged at $26.23
- WTI crude oil futures are trading up $0.35 or 0.57% at $62.25
- Bitcoin is up another $2000 or 3.81% at $55,266. That it is just off the high of $55,323. The low price reach $52,644.82.
In the premarket for US stocks the major indices are up modestly. The S&P and NASDAQ index both closed at record levels yesterday:
- S&P index up 3.63 points
- Dow industrial average up 3.43 points
- NASDAQ index up 15.59 points
in the European equity markets, the major indices are lower:
- German DAX, -0.3%
- France's CAC -0.2%
- UK's FTSE 100 -0.25%
- Spain's Ibex, -0.2%
- Italy's FTSE MIB, -0.26%
In the US debt market, yields are higher ahead of the seven year note auction later today (at 1 PM).
In the European debt market, the benchmark 10 year yields are trading modestly higher. France yields remain above the 0.0% level at 0.086%.
