Forex trading news and economic data headlines 3 April 2017
News:
- Gibraltar's Picardo says "we want to stay British"
- Picardo calls on EU leaders to remove reference to Gibraltar from draft Brexit guidelines
- The EU draft Brexit guidelines have the full backing of the European Commission
- Cable pops under 1.2500 as GBPJPY leads the way again
- ECB's Praet says current monetary policy stance remains appropriate
- I hope Eurozone governments realise that rates will not stay low says Coeure
- ECB's Coeure says "over time we would expect that our new cash collateral facility will help reduce tensions"
- SNB total sight deposits w-e 31 March CHF 561.71bln vs 560.08bln prev
- Spanish GDP to grow 2.8% in 2017 say Bank of Spain
- Option expiries for the 10 am NY cut today 3 April
- More option expiries of note this week 4-7 April
- Nikkei 225 closes up +0.39% at 18,983.23
Data:
- March 2017 UK Markit/CIPS manufacturing PMI 54.2 vs 54.6 exp
- Eurozone February PPI mm 0.0% vs +0.1% exp
- Eurozone February unemployment rate 9.5% as exp
- Eurozone Markit March manufacturing PMI final 56.2 vs 56.2 exp
- March 2016 German Markit manufacturing PMI final 58.3 vs 58.3 exp
- France Markit March manufacturing PMI final 53.3 vs 53.4 exp
- Italy Markit/ADACI March manufacturing PMI 55.7 vs 55.0 prev
- February 2017 Italian unemployment rate 11.5% vs 11.9% exp
- Spain Markit manufacturing PMI March 53.9 vs 54.8 prev
- Switzerland Markit manufacturing PMI March 58.6 vs 57.8 prev
- Switzerland February retail sales yy +0.6% vs -1.2% prev
- Australia March commodity index SDR terms yy 50.1% vs 59.1% prev
- India Nikkei/Markit March manufacturing PMI 52.5 vs 50.7 prev
It's been a data busy session to start off the new week and month but ranges have been limited.
USD demand though has prevailed mostly with euro getting a bit of support from strong PMIs but the pound getting the wrong end of the data stick to spend most of the session on the back foot.
Decent mftg PMI reports from the Eurozone did little to help the euro as they came with first EURGBP then EURJPY supply giving EURUSD a knock to 1.0653 from 1.0670. Then came the poor UK data and we saw EURGBP up from 0.8515 to 0.8540 having survived the early test of 0.8500. The rally saw GBPUSD pushed down from 1.2534 to 1.2493 and it's remained on the back since.
USDJPY meanwhile was nudging back up from 111.25 to post 111.60 only to retreat to 111.27 then back to 111.51 as USD demand prevailed but not without some JPY cross impact too.
European equity markets opened in mixed mode and remained there while gold and oil have also had a mixed time of it leaving AUDUSD and USDCAD tightly bound.
More data on the slate from NA plus a couple of Fed heads but I'm not expecting any great changes to the week's understandably cautious start.
