Forex headlines for May 20, 2013:
- Silver jumps after 7% drop, gold follows
- Fed’s Evans: Economy improving ‘quite a lot’
- Evans would be amenable to tapering if confident labor market would continue to improve
- Fed’s Fisher would have started tapering at last meeting
- Fed’s Fisher expects real US GDP over 2.5% by year-end
- Aso: No guarantee domestic investors will finance debt – RTRS
- Chicago Fed April national activity index -0.53 vs -0.23 prior
- Oil jumps to two-week high on Middle East and supply worries
- UK FTSE closes at highest since 2000
- S&P flat at 1666
- NZD leads, USD lags
The calendar was light today and a theme of US dollar weakness set in early in US trading and it persisted despite the upbeat comments from Evans. EUR/USD poked above 1.29 late in US trading from 1.2860 at the start of trading.
Other pairs were slightly more active but the general theme was 40-60 pips of US dollar weakness across the board. Stocks were mostly a non-factor, with the S&P 500 trading in a 9 point range around unchanged.
The excitement was in precious metals. Silver plummeted and gold dropped shortly after the weekly open but the metals stabilized in Europe. Near the European close, they began to shoot higher and silver had a 12.5% low-to-high gain. Gold was less dramatic but is trading near $1400 after falling as low as $1337 overnight.
