Market Update May 20 – USD gets reprieve

Market News Today – USD gets a reprieve from surprise FOMC minutes. Minutes showed “taper talk” was discussed much more than any participant held implied since the meeting. USDIndex back over 90.00. Equities closed down -0.29%, USA500 4115, despite robust earnings from Lowes & Target, CISCO disappointed, after hours. Asian markets follow lower.  Overnight AUD unemployment mixed, JPY machine Orders better, trade flat.

This week – Economic data slim, FOMC Minutes, Earnings from Walmart (Beat), Vodafone (in-line), Home Depot (beat),  Target (beat), Lowes (beat) Cisco (miss). Still to come today – Applied Materials & Ralph Lauren.

EUR – down from 3-mth highs at 1.2240 under 1.2200 to 1.2185JPY still struggles at  109.00Cable back under 1.4200 and 14100 now. AUD back to 0.7750, CAD up from 6-year lows to 1.2100. 

USOIL edges back up after yesterdays sell-off from under $62.50 to $63.50, Gold – rallied to 3.5 mth high to test key resistance at  $1875, again trades at $1874. Commodities cooled but remain robust. BTC sank under $30,000, (& lost -54% from peak last month) – back to $40k now. All from Musk &  “China banned its financial institutions from offering cryptocurrency registration, trading, clearing, and settlement in a blow to investors who were betting that digital assets will gain mainstream status.” Reuters.  

European Open – The June 10-year Bund future is down -15 ticks, underperforming versus U.S. futures, which have moved slightly higher, while in cash markets the 10-year Treasury rate is down -0.2 bp at 1.67%. The reading is up from overnight lows though, as stock market sentiment started to stabilise during the Asian part of the session and DAX and FTSE 100 futures are posting gains of 0.6% and 0.9% respectively. U.S. futures have moved sideways after a weaker close on Wall Street and against the background of the Fed minutes, which suggested that some policy markets have at least started to think about tapering “some point”. For now though the official line at central banks is that the uptick in inflation is transitory and ECB’s Schnabel, who predicted a German CPI rate of over 3% later in the year, said that inflation is likely to recede again in 2022.

Today –  US Initial Job ClaimsPhiladelphia Fed Business Index, SARB rate decision, ECB’s Lane, Lagarde, BoE’s Cunliffe, Fed’s Kaplan, Earnings from Applied Materials & Ralph Lauren

Biggest FX Mover @ (07:30 GMT) AUDCHF (+0.34%) rallied from under 0.6961, yesterday to over 0.7005 now. Faster MAs remain aligned higher,  RSI 60 & moving higher, MACD histogram & signal line aligned higher having broke 0 line earlier. Stochs rising and in OB zone from earlier. H1 ATR 0.0011, Daily ATR 0.0051.

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Stuart Cowell

Head Market Analyst

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