Forex news and trading headlines 16 December 2016
News:
- UK's May tells EU leaders she wants an early Brexit deal
- China will keep liquidity basically stable
- China's SAFE says cross-border capital flows relatively stable in Nov
- Central banks won't stand in for politicians says ECB's Weidmann
- Euro retreats again after running into fresh sell interest
- Option expiries for the 10 am NY cut today 16 Dec
- Nikkei 225 closes up +0.66% at 19.401.15
Data:
- November 2016 Eurozone CPI final 0.6% vs 0.6% exp y/y
- December 2016 UK CBI industrial trends orders 0 vs -5 exp
- Eurozone trade balance Oct SA EUR +19.7bln vs +24.7bln exp
A gentler session in tempo and range compared to recent ones post-FOMC with range-trading being the order of the day with markets/traders/robots looking for the next direction.
Early euro demand saw EURUSD attempt to clear 1.0450 from 1.0430 which also saw EURGBP nudge up through 0.8410 from 0.8387 but in both cases ran out of steam and retreated only to run into fresh demand.
That encouraged another move higher and we saw 1.0472/0.8426 with EURJPY posting 123.60 from 123.30 with EURUSD possibly targeting large 1.0500 option expiries . It wasn't to be though and we retreated once again within the session ranges.
GBPUSD responded accordingly in a 1.2420-50 range but has just seen a dip to 1.2416 before a strong bounce to 1.2453 as I type.
Meanwhile USDJPY had a steady rise to 118.43 from 118.00 before, yep, retreating back to 117.93 only to bounce back to 118.24 with a similar pattern in other pairs.
Commodity ccys were mostly on the back foot early on with softer prices only to reverse but equities have made gains after an indifferent opening.
US housing data at 13.30 GMT but the market has more than an air of end-of-week-fatigue to it so far today. Perhaps NA desks can inject some energy.
