TheLFB-Forex.com A Forex Trader PortalMarket Review:
Europeans Lead The Way, Late In The Week
TheLFB-Forex.com A Forex Trader Portal
Market Review:
Europeans Lead The Way, Late In The Week
In the daily market review with TheLFB trade team, Dan Cook, Snr Market Analyst at IG Markets, looks at the impact of a slow fundamental week. Catch Dan, and TheLFB trade team on ForexTV Live.
EUR/USD – The Euro followed through on the move that started yesterday and was finally able to break through the small channel it had been stuck in for the past week. After finally climbing over the wall that was the 1.3700 level the continental currency received additional fundamental support in form of Industrial Production figures. Industrial Production in the Euro Area (EA16) posted growth of 1.7% during January. This more than doubled the expectation of 0.8% and the Euro rode the news higher.
The technicals came back into play; however, and the Euro was stifled at the top end of the longer term channel which started in mid-February. After just peaking through the high of February 17th the Dollar regained control and again fundamentals continued what the technicals started. Bouncing down from the resistance level near 1.3800, better than expected US Retail Sales figures added more pressure to the Euro as we headed into the start of the US trading day.
GBP/USD – Sterling also continued through on the upward momentum which started on March 10. After a small retracement heading into the London trading session the GBP found technical support from the short term upward trend line and took full advantage shooting straight up for almost 150 pips before slowing down. After somewhat mixed comments from MPC member Spencer Dale suggested both the next step of withdrawing quantitative easing that started one-year ago and the potential need for additional amounts of quantitative easing, this pair started moving sideways as the market did not seem to know which way to head.
The directional verdict came down though when US Retail Sales posted 0.3% growth and Core Retail Sales figures showed 0.8% growth. Both sides of this report far surpassed expectations and the US Dollar has taken back some of the ground lost. As we close out the week the GBP/USD pair is very near an important resistance level near 1.5200 which represents both the high on March 8th as well as the bottom of last weekend’s opening gap.
USD/CAD – Of the two North American Dollars the loonie has been the stronger of the two today. After a modest statement of strength during the Australasian and European trading sessions, the exclamation point was added on the release Canadian Employment Data. Statistics Canada showed that the northern nation exceeded forecasts by adding 20.9K jobs to the economy in February.
This positive figure helped to push down the overall Unemployment Rate one tick to 8.2%. On the back of this news the CAD shot higher. The US Dollar was able to stop the bleeding a bit on the release of promising retail sales data; however, even that positive news has only helped the USD to gain back a small percentage of the value lost earlier.
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