Forex news for North American trade on July 25, 2018:
- Trump secures concessions from Europeans to avoid trade war - report
- Trump and Juncker to deliver joint statement
- Qualcomm said to be preparing to give up on NXP bid
- US Senate to introduce bipartisan bill to delay auto tariffs
- Nikkei: BOJ to review allocation of ETF buying
- Canada's Freeland: NAFTA negotiations are at a very advanced stage
- Euro falls after WaPo story describes Trump's insistence on auto tariffs
- EIA weekly US oil inventories -6147K vs -3000K expected
- US June new home sales 631K vs 668K expected
- Belgian July business confidence -1.3 vs +0.6 prior
- PBOC said to ease bank capital rule - report
- Larry Kudlow says he expects 'impressive' GDP number on Friday
Markets:
- Gold up $8 to $1232
- WTI crude up 91-cents to $69.39
- S&P 500 up 26 points to 2864 -- highest since late January
- US 10-year yields up 1 bps to 2.69%
- CAD leads, USD lags
Reports and speculation of a Trump-Juncker deal have dominated trading late in the day and sent most currencies to session highs against the US dollar, while sending the S&P 500 within 1% of an all-time high.
EUR/USD ran into resistance at 1.1712 early in the day and then sank on a report about auto tariffs, hitting 1.1664 but optimism about Trump-Juncker started to build from there and the pair got up to 1.1712 again before backing off. It finally broke higher on the WSJ report of a deal but we're still awaiting details and the ECB is Thursday.
USD/CAD was weak early on overnight reports of Trump sending a letter to AMLO about a NAFTA deal and the weakness continued as oil rose and tariff talk subsided. It was really a perfect storm as the pair dropped to 1.3045.
AUD/USD similarly climbed throughout the second half of the day to high 0.7455 from 0.7400 and the kiwi to 0.6840 from 0.6800.
Cable rose as high as 1.3201 with the gains coming on the US dollar side as Brexit headlines were quiet for once.
USD/JPY finished a quarter-cent lower despite the better tone on trade as the market it juggling BOJ headlines, the China trade war and risk sentiment. It had fallen as low as 110.67 but rebounded to 110.95 late.
