Morning brief for June 26
In the absence of the news catalysts over the weekend, the market moves were subdued in Asia today. In the early hours of the session, the focus was on the Bank of Japan's summary of opinion - the info from the last bank's meeting. It did the i's and crossed the t's and made clear that policymakers have no thoughts of tapering any time soon. Despite upbeat growth data, inflation is still far below the target. So, there is still lots of bond purchases going forward. USD/JPY ticked a little bit higher to 111.30 in the Asian session. There is a scope for a further surge towards 111.80. A failed test of this level may result in a rollback towards 111.00, 110.90.
USD/CAD rose to 1.3260. The Loonie still needs time to recover from Friday's losses. It weakened significantly at the end of the past week following the extremely poor Canadian CPI. The headline fell to 1.3% from 1.5% and in doing called a halt to the discussion of an imminent rate hike. It seems that the US dollar still has some strength to test the resistance of 1.3340. If the Loonie takes its heart again we will be waiting for its return to 1.3250/1.3210 levels.
EUR/USD slipped a few points today and reached 1.1190. German Ifo Business Climate is about to come out at 12:00 GMT+3. An upbeat headline indicating Germany's economic health will push the euro higher towards the nearest resistance at 1.1205 or even higher. A missing print would trigger EUR selling - EUR/USD falling towards the supports at 1.1175/1.1165.
Much more interesting than the economic data this week/today will be the number of central banks' head on the speaking roster. The ECB President Mario Draghi and former Fed's Chair Bernanke are set to kick off Sinatra's proceedings with the speeches later this day. In the upcoming three days there will a panel on Wednesday featuring Mark Carney, Mario Draghi, Haruhiko Kuroda and Stephen Poloz. Janet Yellen will be speaking on Wednesday.
The British pound increased to 1.2742 in the Asian session. Aussie also made some gains today against USD. It rose to 0.7575 from 0.7600/0.7625. Brent oil futures jumped above $46.20 after having fallen for almost 5 weeks in a row on concerns OPEC-led production cuts may fail to ease a global glut.