The major indices in the United States have opened lower following on from the muted day across European bouses, ahead of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy decision, which will be announced at 6.30 pm GMT today.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average index was flat at the open and the Nasdaq 100 has rotated around the 13000 level since the opening Initial Balance range was printed after the first hour of futures trading.
The World Health Oranization (WHO) said today that the Astrazeneca's coronavirus vaccine should continue to be administered, parroting the UK government's stance of the benefits outweigh its risks.
The economic calendar was light today, but we did have European data for their construction output and inflation. The data disappointed as Construction Output reduced by 1.9 percent year-on-year in January of 2021, marking the 5th consecutive month of no growth in the construction sector and core inflation rate year-on-year came in with expectations at 1.1% and 0.3% down from January.
Housing starts in the US sank 10.3 percent month-over-month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,421,000 in February of 2021, the lowest reading in six months and below market expectations of 1.56 million. Housing starts reached the highest rate in 14 years in December as is the trend for people to move away from the big cities due to the coronavirus pandemic. Building permits data from the United States also declined by 10.8 percent from a month earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.682 million in February 2021.
According to today’s US Energy Information Administration (EIA) report, there was a build in US Crude oil by 2.4 million barrels in comparison to the previous week to reach 500.8 million barrels in the week ending March 12 the revealed-on Wednesday. They also report that US crude oil imports declined by 332,000 bpd and averaged 5.3 million barrels per day last week, meanwhile, gasoline production dropped to 8.9 million barrels per day the same week.
In the EIA data, crude oil refinery inputs increased by 1.1 million barrels per day week-on-week to an overall weekly average of 13.4 million barrels per day, while operating at 76.1% of their operable capacity, suggesting that there is a possible trending supply greater than the current demand would suggest is needed.
WTI oil dropped 1.27%, and touched around the previous support level on the H1 chart around $63.70 per barrel. The H1 chart has been good at capturing the short-term speculative trading moves, if you go long above the Ichimoku cloud and short below, ensuring to filter with a 200-period ema too. Current price action is below the cloud and moving average, so we could be at the start of a nice sell-off. You can manage your risk by using the upper bounds of the cloud.
Today’s Canadian inflation data rose to 1.1% in February of 2021 from 1% in January and below market expectations of 1.3%. This is markedly higher due to the price of energy, so if you remove that component, the inflation rate was 1.0%, down from 1.3% in January. Maybe today’s report from the EIA will be the top in the rise in energy prices and inflation expectations. The USDCAD has been bearish for a year now, and the current sentiment indicator on the ActivTrader platform has the Bullish sentiment at the 85% level.
For me, I would like to see evidence that the US dollar has some bullish momentum, especially against the Canadian dollar which benefits from the higher energy prices.
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