The dollar continues to dominate proceedings in the post-election period, holding slight gains again today. Fedspeak will be one to watch in the day ahead but I reckon US data will take on more importance in trading this week. We will be getting CPI, PPI, and retail sales data among other things over the next few days.
For now though, the dollar is keeping in a comfortable spot overall. EUR/USD has dropped to its lowest since April with eyes on the low then at 1.0601. Meanwhile, USD/JPY had a brief brush against the 154.00 level earlier in the day before keeping near flat levels again just above 153.50.
Elsewhere, the pressure continues with AUD/USD down 0.3% to 0.6550 levels and angling for a third straight day of losses. This comes as the yuan continues to stay more pressured amid a lack of faith in China’s stimulus measures. Chinese equities have been surprisingly more resilient though, so there are some mixed fortunes there.
Looking to the session ahead, UK labour market data will be the main highlight on the economic calendar. But that really doesn’t say much now, does it? The ONS has already been bashed by the BOE amid their lack of quality control in presenting the labour market numbers and that will once again be the case today. As such, it will be tough to extrapolate too much from the numbers and gather much concrete findings from them.
Besides that, we do have final figures for Germany CPI for October and the November ZEW survey data. After which, Fedspeak will be the name of the game in the day ahead.
Here’s the agenda in European trading today:
0700 GMT – Germany October final CPI figures
0700 GMT – UK October payrolls change
0700 GMT – UK September ILO unemployment rate, employment change
0700 GMT – UK September average weekly earnings
1000 GMT – Germany November ZEW survey current conditions, economic sentiment
1100 GMT – US October NFIB small business optimism index
That’s all for the session ahead. I wish you all the best of days to come and good luck with your trading! Stay safe out there.