The day's focus was on the ECB and this important July meeting. Turns out the US jobs market may be slightly more important to traders, depending on your viewpoint. The US dollar appreciating didn’t stop Oil from having its second consecutive days of rising and the stock markets are doing their best to always go up.
Daily Wrap
The London session was quiet as traders waited for the ECB data regarding rates, PEPP, and forward guidance in their monetary policy statement. The initial reaction at 13:45 BST was mixed, and the 15-minute candle closed almost flat having spiked higher and lower. 45 minutes later President Lagarde headed up the ECB press conference and the market reaction started off positively for the EURUSD until the US session opened. It is hard to know whether the rising EURUSD was because of the ECB’s decisions or because of the worse than expected US initial jobs data that coincided with the press conference opening remarks.
The US initial jobless claims rose to 419k versus the market’s expectation of 350k. To make a bad reading worse, the previous week was also revised higher from 360k to 368k. The 4-week moving average which removes week-to-week volatility also increased by 750 to 385,250.
The US dollar index refuses to break lower out of the rising channel it is trading within. Over the coming days, we will have a better idea of what the money markets think about the ECB not updating guidance on future PEPP purchases, as if the Hawks like this, the euro will overall rise, and if the doves get a whiff of further financial support and stimulus the euro will collapse. President Lagarde did say that the economic recovery was on track and that the medium-term outlook for inflation was still below target. The ECB governing council has been unanimous on most monetary policies and that they want to avoid a premature tightening of policy.
The EU Consumer Confidence Flash data for July showed a weaker number than expected, so this data could have helped the drop in the EURUSD.
The EU Commission has put the UK on warning as they plan to escalate the process of launching legal action against the UK regarding breaching the Brexit withdrawal agreement terms. The Northern Ireland protocol is going to be a bone of contention for some time.
The Nasdaq did not trade lower than the US opening print today, unlike the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P500. For most traders in the Nasdaq, it looked like we were trending higher having broken above the initial balance range. Then news came across the wires that there was a major internet outage. And the price dropped from the day’s high all the way back to the opening level.
The website Down Detector listed several major firms as suffering problems, and the outage reportedly affected UPS, FedEx, and Amazon Web Services.
When something like this happens and the Nasdaq doesn’t make a new low for the session, I find waiting for the S&P500 to make a new move either higher or lower to be the best way to go. In this case, the S&P500 started to find bids and the Nasdaq followed.
Oil remains bid after the London close and with the US dollar rising the USDCAD is trading within a tight range today.
The ActivTrades sentiment indicator shows that oil is now balanced, whereas the USDCAD remains very bullish for these retail traders. With the strength in the DXY, it is hard to see how they are wrong, but I am waiting to see if the US dollar can drop out of that channel and for these USDCAD traders to get trapped long.
Tomorrow is another bank holiday for Japan but there is lots of Flash PMI data for Europe, the UK, and the USA to come, so we should have some movement in the markets tomorrow.
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