Forex News Video Recap (1/5) - USD Goes on Warpath After ...EUR/USD - Euro Slides on Concerns about Sovereign Debt The euro was under pressure across the board in European trading Wednesday as concerns over the weaker members of the euro zone returned on news that the Swiss National Bank has excluded Irish government bonds from being used as collateral for its repo operations, on top of Portugal selling Treasury bills at a high yield. Portugal was in the spotlight after it sold EUR500 million of six-month treasury bills at an auction. Although the auction was well covered, the high yield (3.686%) it had to pay failed to provide any impetus to the euro. Higher yields means that some troubled countries like Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain will struggle to pay their debts. The EUR/USD broke below out of its sideways channel, showing a double top pattern. We tested and broke below the 1.3250 level and we look set to test the 1.31 area. USD/JPY - USD Surges Past 82.30 Resistance Level Following ADP Data The USD.JPY surged against the Yen in today's trading as we had first anticipation of a stonrger jobs report from the US, and then that report coming in way higher than expected. That helped the USD/JPY pair break thrugh 82.30, retracing further the sharp fall we had seen to end December. IF USD strength continues, then we could target the 84.40 area yet again. USD/CHF - Dollar Retraces its Year-End Losses vs CHF Ditto for the USD/CHF, as it too retraced its falls from late December. Here we rose to the 0.96 area before finding resistance. The next stop to the upside would be 0.9715. Now, the stronger US data is more a US recovery story than global recovery story and the data helped the USD to gain broadly. ADP Employment Shows 297K Private Sector Jobs Gained in December Looking at that employment report, private sector payrolls increased by 297,000 in December after a revised gain of 92,000 in the previous month. The forecast coming in was for a 100K gain, so we nearly tripled expectations. That's a very strong report and could make the projected 138,000 gain in Friday's non-farm payroll report now seem conservative. Employment in the service-producing sector rose 270,000, the largest monthly increase on record; the data go back to 2000. Employment in the goods-producing sector rose 27,000, the biggest increase since February 2006. USD/CAD - Canadian Dollar Turns on a Dime Following US Data One currency benefiting from the good US data that isn't the USD was the Canadian Dollar. We see the pair reversing on a dime at the 1.020 level and surging back down in favor of the CAD following that ADP release. GBP/USD -- UK Construction Data Stalls Rally Elsewhere, the recent rally in sterling stalled after data showed U.K. construction activity contracted in December. The report is a sign that the construction sector could be facing an increasingly challenging environment. The December purchasing managers survey points to contracting construction activity, which reinforces belief that the construction sector will have made nothing like the contribution to U.K. gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter of 2010 that it did it in the third and second quarters. AUD/USD -- Floods Trim Expectations for RBA Rate Hikes, AUD Suffers The other focal point of the session was the Australian dollar which continued to weaken against the dollar as a fall in commodity prices combined with damaging floods in the Australian state of Queensland weighed on the currency. The two factors have pulled the Australian dollar back from a six-month long surge as prospects for any near-term rate hike by the Reserve Bank of Australia, are lowered significantly. "Any hopes for an early move from the RBA have been dashed and this has weighed on the Aussie code pour embarquer la vidéo : >>> http://www.youtube.com/embed/LjSfPG80bro <<< |