Forex news for US trading on October 27, 2017:
- Trump leaning towards Powell for Fed Chair - report
- US Q3 advance GDP 3.0% vs +2.6% expected
- Rajoy fires the entire Catalan government, says elections to be held Dec 21
- Baker Hughes US oil rig count 737 vs 736 prior
- Spain Article 155 comes into force
- New York Fed Q3 GDP Nowcast +1.6% vs 1.5% prior
- Jeff Bezos is the world's richest man after Amazon shares jump
- Final Oct U Mich consumer sentiment 100.7 vs 100.7 expected
- CFTC Commitments of Traders: All the CAD longs are underwater
Markets:
- S&P 500 up 20 points to record 2580
- Gold up $6 to $1272
- WTI crude up $1.30 to $53.95
- US 10-year yields down 4 bps to 2.42%
- NZD leads, US dollar lags
The easy thing to do would be to blame the US dollar softness late in the day on a story saying Trump was leaning towards Powell. Maybe that's the case.
Alternatively, maybe the US dollar bulls decided to take a bit of a break after a big week and took some money off the table. The GDP report was strong but there were some caveats.
At the end of the day, there was no great reason to buy the US dollar unless you were trying to buy shares of big-cap tech, which were absolutely flying on Friday.
The scope of the USD retracement was fairly big. USD/JPY hit a session high of 114.45 after GDP but quickly pared that and then slid down to 113.71.
Yields fell globally after the Catalonia news but the market has been generally happy to ignore the developments and today was no different. The euro fell as low as 1.1575 but bounced back to 1.1602 in modest trading.
Cable bounced a bit higher in a climbed to 1.3129 from 1.3070. It's still 30 pips lower on the day but basically flat since London started.
A bigger reversal was in USD/CAD, which fell to 1.2827 from as high as 1.2917. The big driver there was oil as it busted the April high in a $1.30. It's also the time of month when you see CAD-positive settlement flows from oil.
AUD had a rough week but finished a tad higher on Friday to break a five-day losing streak. It hit as low as 0.7625 then bounced to 0.7673 to finish at a session high.
Did someone say 'leaning Powell'?
Have a great weekend.
