First, a review of last week’s events:
EUR/USD. The trade wars unleashed by the previous US President Trump have just seemingly subsided, but now we can “congratulate” everyone on the start of a new – currency – war. And it could prove equally exciting and unpredictable. This time, it was the European Central Bank, headed by Christine Lagarde, that declared hostilities. The adversary was, as you might guess, the US Federal Reserve System.
We have repeatedly written that the growth of the euro was caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The European currency rose against the dollar by more than 1700 points from March 20, 2020 to January 15, 2021. For the time being, the ECB leadership pretended that the problem lies not in the current level of the EUR/USD rate, but in the rate of its growth. But it turns out now that the current quotes are also of great importance for the EU economy, and that it would not be bad for them to go down.
The heads of the Banks of Finland and the Netherlands have started to speak actively about the fact that the ECB is very concerned about the euro exchange rate and should take decisive steps to stimulate inflation, hinting at a further decrease in interest rates. And Janet Yelen will definitely not like it. Recall that the former head of the Federal Reserve, and now the new US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yelen promised in every possible way to stop other countries’ attempts to artificially reduce the rates of their currencies.
So, we can assume that the challenge has been posed and accepted, and the duel has begun. And right from the start, the EU has been let down… by its main support, Germany. It turns out that inflation in this country in January jumped from -0.7% to + 1.6%, which will certainly affect the growth of the total indicator of the Eurozone. Whether this will entail an accelerated curtailment of the ECB’s quantitative stimulus (QE) program remains in question. The market is at a crossroads, which can be clearly seen from the EUR/USD quotes: the pair has been moving in a rather narrow sideways channel 1.2055-1.2185 for the last two and a half weeks. And even the fall of US stock indices on January 27-29 could not push it out of this corridor. As for the end of the week, the pair put the final point at 1.2135;
GBP/USD. Last week, most analysts (65%) refused to share the bullish optimism of technical analysis. The reason is the poor performance of the British economy and the statement of the country’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that the third round of the lockdown could last well into the summer. This is forcing investors to not just revise their forecasts for the pound, but also to re-start discussing a scenario with negative Bank of England interest rates.
Looking at the chart of the pair, we can state that the bullish momentum has exhausted itself for the time being. Even fresh positive data on the UK labor market, published on January 26, did not help the pound. The pair cannot break above resistance 1.3750 for the second week in a row. Its volatility has also plummeted. If it exceeded 400 points a week at the end of December, the figure has now fallen to 150 points. As for the end of the five-day period, the final chord sounded in the zone of another strong resistance level, at 1.3700;
USD/JPY. The medium-term trend for this pair was laid back at the end of March 2020, when it began to slide smoothly along the descending channel. There have been many discussions among experts, whether the pair will be able to reverse this trend and break through the upper limit of this channel.
It was only 30% of analysts who voted for such a development a week ago, but they were the ones who were right. The zone 104.70-105.00 was indicated as the target of the bulls, which was reached by the pair USD/JPY on Friday, January 29. Unlike the euro and the pound, it reacted quite actively to both positive reports on the labor market and the US trade balance. But the main impetus was given by the redistribution of financial flows caused by the fall of the American stock indices S&P500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq. As a result, the pair reached the 10-week high at 104.95, and ended the trading session slightly lower at 104.70;
cryptocurrencies. We were certainly joking, but it seems the forecast of a fortune teller from New York is starting to come true. Last week we talked about Maren Altman, who determines the trends of the BTC/USD pair based on the stars movement. So,…
Read More: Forex Forecast and Cryptocurrencies Forecast
