multitude of market moving events last week led to severe gyrations in risk appetite but with no clear direction for currencies. Indeed, currency markets were whipsawed as the news flow shifted back and forth. Major events such as the European Central Bank (ECB) and US Federal Reserve meetings, and US jobs data provided plenty of volatility points for markets. This week’s US data slate is less littered with first tier data, with trade data and Michigan confidence, the highlights of the week. Against this background the USD will take direction from events in the eurozone and in our view will likely trade with a firmer bias given that eurozone tensions will not ease quickly.
The EUR was relatively resilient despite a referendum (later cancelled) that could have spelled the beginning of the end of Greece’s membership in the eurozone. Nonetheless, the currency still dropped over the week. This week will be no different as markets sift through various pieces of news regarding Greece and the EU rescue plan. Although the Greek Prime Minister survived a confidence vote the EUR will remain vulnerable to a lack of detail about the EU rescue plan including but not limited to how the mechanism for leveraging the EFSF bailout fund. The longer the delay in providing such details the bigger the risk to the EUR. Data releases will be unhelpful for the EUR, with hard data such as German industrial production confirming a slowdown in activity.
Japan’s FX intervention at the beginning of last week has all but been forgotten among the plethora of other market moving news. Expectations that it would be followed up by more intervention proved incorrect as the Japanese authorities refrained from more action. Perhaps the onset of the G20 meeting stayed their hand but markets will be wary of more intervention this week. However, as the strengthening current account data in Japan will likely reveal this week, Japan’s strong external position continues to feed the underlying upward pressure on the JPY for the time being.
Interestingly FX markets appear to be reacting to growth orientated central bank policy rather than yield as reflected in the fact that EUR and GBP both strengthened despite additional quantitative easing from Bank of England at its last meeting and a rate cut from the ECB last week. This week however, inaction from the BoE will provide little direction to GBP while a likely drop in industrial production will raise fears that the economy continues to be in need of more remedial action from the central bank. GBP continues to be favoured but after having made up a lot of ground versus EUR it could lose some steam this week.
ECONOMETER 