Forex news and trading headlines 31 Jan 2016
News:
- UK parliament today begins debate to approve triggering of Article 50
- BOJ's Kuroda says CPI likely to hit 2% target around FY 2018
- More from Kuroda: Negative rates are appropriate for meeting price target
- More from Kuroda (2): Too early to discuss QQE exit strategy
- The Eurozone needs more ECB QE
- The price of oil is going up
- Nikkei 225 closes down -1.69% at 19,041.34
Data:
- January 2017 Eurozone CPI flash data report 1.8% vs 1.6% exp y/y
- Eurozone Q4 GDP flash SA qq vs +0.5% as expected
- December 2016 Eurozone unemployment rate 9.6% vs 9.8% exp
- Germany Jan unemployment change -26k vs -5k exp
- France January CPI flash mm -0.2% vs-0.5% exp
- France Q4 GDP flash qq +0.4% as expected
- Italy December PPI mm +0.6% vs -0.2% prev
- Spain January CPI flash mm -0.5% vs -1.1% exp
- December 2016 UK mortgage approvals 67,898 vs 69,000 exp
- Italy December unemployment rate flash 12.0% vs 11.8% exp
- Germany December retail sales mm -0.9% vs +0.6% exp
A session dominated by data and month-end flows has seen the pound bear the brunt.
Check your charts for all the various moves but lots of euro-positive data eventually added to the usual month-end EURGBP demand and we've seen that pair up to 0.8635 from 0.8550 which has in turn helped lift EURUSD to 1.0725 after holding 1.0680.
The EURGBP demand has helped drive cable lower still to 1.2412 before general USD supply returned (DXY down over 0.3%) and we've had a rally to 1.2460. GBPJPY supply again though has helped cap rallies with USDJPY also failing into 114.00 after a decent early move up from 113.40.
AUDUSD and USDCAD have both been contained by cross flows and tight ranging oil price but USDCHF has succumbed to a combo of safe-haven franc demand and EURUSD rally to fall back to 0.9920 with EURCHF picking itself off the floor to rally from 1.0636 to 1.0660.
European equities opened softer but then made gains before running out of steam with only the FTSE hanging in there as GBP pairs weakened.
Busy month-end session as we have come to expect and it's not over yet by a long way.
