USDCAD ready to breakout on USD strength
The US dollar is making a bid for the recent highs once more, with the US traders coming back from a 4th July holiday. US traders return after their long week to find oil prices at the highest level since 2018, European sentiment weaker and the ISM Services PMI data weaker than expected.
Market Wrap
The headline figure for the Service PMI came in at 60.1%, so a couple of points below the market expectations of 63.5 and 4 points lower than the previous month. A reading above 50 indicates growth in the services sector, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. It would be hard to say that may be the peak as one disappointing data point doesn’t make a trend, but the US equities markets didn’t like it. Bottlenecks and supply constraints are hampering business activity and the longer this goes on the worse the bottom line will be for those companies that reside in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
At the London close, the DJIA was down -0.94% to trade under 34,500 and has wiped out the last 3 trading sessions worth of price action. A sweep of 34,000 would signal the higher probability that this is not just a buy-the-dip moment, but catching a falling knife is not recommended, especially as the DJIA hasn’t been making all-time highs recently.
The price action today has tested the daily 20 ema, and for now, that is holding as a dynamic support. The market structure to the left of the chart is a little balance area from 25th-30th June, so maybe some buyers are still in there.
The US dollar has caught a bid after pulling back from the trend line resistance and April 2021 highs, today's price action is looking likely to be a bullish engulfing day and a close above the Friday high would seal the deal.
A close above Friday’s high in the come days would also invalidate any notion of the price divergence to the stochastic, and if anything, the longer the stochastic stays over the 70 line the longer the trend is likely to continue to the upside.
One of the reasons the US dollar has caught a bid is due to the German ZEW Economic sentiment for July missing expectations. It came in at 63.3 down from the previous 79.8 and under the 75.2 expected. A reading above 50 is obviously great and the ZEW report stated:
“The economic development continues to normalise. In the meantime, the situation indicator for Germany has clearly overcome the coronavirus-related decline. Although the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment has once again fallen significantly, it is still at a very high level. The financial market experts, therefore, expect the overall economic situation to be extraordinarily positive in the coming six months,” comments ZEW President Professor Achim Wambach on current expectations. Which in itself sounds like a positive, but the traders in the euro were not happy.
Once again, my attention is drawn to the rising support line that would now meet the internal trend line around 1.1770, a break below that technical support and we would be looking to sweep the swing lows from the end of March 2021 and possibly November 2020.
The EURUSD has shed -0.38% today and is down almost -3% for the month.
Crude Oil is taking a decent tumble from the new July highs, with the daily 20 ema the first dynamic support and the swing low from the 29th June the next significant swing low.
The markets won’t like uncertainty around possible production flows and with no new data from the OPEC+ group of nations the US dollar may be influencing the current price action more significantly than it has before.
The USDCAD is looking like a very clear Cup and Handle technical pattern which if it were to break out to the upside, could see USDCAD prices back around the 1.2950-1.300 levels.