Forex news and trading headlines 17 Jan 2016
News:
- UK May's Brexit speech: Wants Britain to be truly global
- More from May: "We are leaving the EU but not leaving Europe"
- More from May (2) : "What I am proposing can not mean membership of EU single market"
- More from May (3): UK will not seek transitional status deal
- OBR says UK public finances likely to suffer steady and unsustainable deterioration with changes to healthcare policy
- France wants clarity on Brexit says Sapin
- USDJPY continues the journey south
- When will the BOE hike rates on inflation, and will it make a difference?
- China to reduce restrictions on foreign investment
- China's Xi: Many of the world's problems not caused by economic globalization
- More from Xi: No one is the winner in a trade war
- Trump adviser Scaramucci says care needed on rising US dollar
- ECB's Nowotny says Trump/Fed relationship "isn't cozy"
- SNB's Jordan says US policy normalization is a very positive sign
- Saudi's still dismissive of US shale production
- Turkey's Yildrim says central bank will not hesitate to do what is necessary
- Former RBI governor Rajan says US facing a difficult balancing act
- Nikkei 225 closes down -1.48% at 18,813.53
Data:
- December 2016 UK CPI 1.6% vs 1.4% exp y/y
- UK December PPI output NSA mm +0.1% vs +0.4% exp
- January 2017 German ZEW economic sentiment index 16.6 vs 18.3 exp
- French 2016 budget deficit EUR-68.97bln
A busy session we expected and a busy session we got.
Far too many price moves to itemize so I'll refer you to your charts but the main movers were:
- GBPUSD to 1.2300 from 1.2080
- EURGBP to 0.8690 from 0.8810
- GBPJPY to 139.80 from 137.08
- USDJPY down to 112.76 from 114.00 then back to 113.40
- EURUSD to 1.0719 from 1.0640
It's been a story about USD softness that then turned to the main event of May's Brexit speech and it was all about the pound and a market struggling to cover short positions. UK inflation data adding to the pre-speech demand.
Sell rumour/buy fact is often the case and we got it today. The speech contained little that we didn't know from the trailers/rumours but May did add that the two houses of parliament will get to vote on the terms and that gave the pound extra legs.
Elsewhere USDCAD fell to 1.3018 on the USD-neg/oil-pos double whammy while AUDUSD continued to benefit from gold rallies and posted 0.7563 .
Equities remained on the soft side but nothing of special note.
Let's see what the NA desks make of it all. Plenty of action left in this day I'm sure.
