ForexLive trading news and data roundup for the American session 17 March 2015
The data
- February 2015 US housing starts 0.897m vs 1.049m exp m/m
- January 2015 Canadian manufacturing sales -1.7% vs -1.2% exp
- New Zealand Fonterra dairy prices fall 8.8%
- Atlanta Fed GDP outlook falls to 0.3% from 0.6%
The news
- Success of QE will depend on banks lending standards says ECB's Makuch
- Bundesbank's Dombret says they will support ECB QE as a majority ECB decision
- Headline: Banks said to risk old Libor charges in currency rigging probes
- Merkel: View talks with Greece as difficult
- Bank of Italy Rossi: Italy economy can grow at a faster pace than before crisis
- US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew: "Starting to see some pressure on the wage growth"
- WSJ: 5 things to look out for in the UK budget
The moves
- Forex technical analysis: GBPUSD makes new week lows and bounces
- Forex technical analysis: EURUSD rises and falls as the theme for the Fed shows up in data
- Forex technical analysis: USDJPY bounces off 200 hour MA
- Forex technical analysis: AUDUSD ignoring technicals (sort of)
- Forex technical analysis: USDCHF support and resistance converging
- Forex technical analysis: EURGBP breaks higher but stalls at topside resistance
- US stocks end mixed on the day. WTI Crude Oil lower. Gold down
- The strongest and weakest currencies for March 17, 2015
The US session didn't let off any fireworks, which is to be expected with Fed day tomorrow. USD/JPY was already on the slide as US traders slipped out of bed and drop in housing starts helped to push the buck to the lows of the day at 121.12. Permits held up and once the weather word dropped to explain the poor starts we started to climb back up. After finding resistance at 121.40 for the rest of the session, we've sat in an 8 pip range for the remainder of the session
EUR/USD regained the pivotal 1.0560/70 level and decided to have a half hearted attempt at clawing through the recent highs. We bugged out once again at 1.0650, and once again we've fallen back through 1.0600 to 1.0595, having found minor support at 1.0585. There's just no effort to force a real break with the event tomorrow
GBP/USD looked to be making a fist of the upside but also failed at the halfway line between 1.48 and 1.48. A quick dip to support at 1.4770 looked to have things under control but another foray into 1.48 didn't last and we were knocked down to 1.4724. The bounces got shallower but the lows surviving for now. EUR/GBP took full benefit of cable's demise breaking into 0.7200. 16 pips we're grabbed over the big figure before some euro weakness in the yen cross, and the dip in EUR/USD from the highs, helped knock it back under to 0.7185
AUD/USD keeps returning to test support ahead of 0.7600 and you know what we say about knocking on the door too many times. NZD/USD took a dive on a big drop on dairy prices after 6 auctions of gains. A quick 30 pip drop from 0.7350 was not recovered and we carried on down to post a pip or so under 0.7300. We head into the Aussie shift 7 pips above the round number.
The Fed is the main event tomorrow but the pound will be in focus as we get the BOE MPC minutes, labour market report and a pre-election budget
