Forex and Bitcoin news from the European morning trading session 26 Feb 2018
News:
- UK will not be joining a customs union after Brexit
- Corbyn says UK still in the dark over May's Brexit plans
- More from Corbyn: Labour Party is not proposing a second Brexit referendum
- Brexit takes another twist as Labour call a different tune on customs union
- Merkel says that lengthy coalition talks reflect 'difficult' landscape
- Greece needs to consider precautionary support programme
- The big risk in European markets this week comes from Italy
- ECB's Coeure says that smooth and successful reform of reference interest rate is vital
- Cable creeps higher as sterling leads the major bloc
- SNB total sight deposits w.e. 23 Feb CHF 576.0 bn vs CHF 575.1 bn prior
- Gold, commodities having a field day as the dollar stays soft
- BofAML revises lower year-end USD/CNY forecast
- Morgan Stanley says emerging markets excluding China will be key driver for 2018 growth
- USD/JPY the prime mover so far in trading today
- AUD/USD upside move stalls at 200-hour moving average, what to look out for?
- Westpac says very little to get excited about Australian wage growth in the years ahead
- Citigroup lifts gold forecast, says rising inflation is "very positive" for commodities
- European equities mostly firmer in early trades
- Trading ideas for the European session 26 Feb
- Nikkei 225 closes higher by 1.19% at 22,153.63
- ForexLive Asia FX news: Yen gets down, gets back up again
Data:
- UK Finance January mortgage approvals 40.12k vs 36.11k prior
- Switzerland Q4 2017 non-farm payrolls 4.962m vs 4.956m prior
- Japan December final leading indicator index 107.4 vs 107.9 prelim
A steady session by and large with most of the USD supply seen in Asia trading but we have not seen too much of a retracement since.
Week-end Brexit comments by the opposition Labour Party ( see article above) had helped underpin the pound and along with large 1.4000 vanilla option interest rolling off today we've seen GBPUSD up to 1.4070 from 1.4035 while EURGBP has drifted lower to 0.8772.
The last hour though has seen some USD demand return sending cable down to 1.4035, EURGBP up to 0.8788 with EURUSD steady around 1.2330 but USDJPY nudging up to 106.78 from 106.60 and USDCHF 0.9350 from 0.9325
AUDUSD has some decent size option interest at 0.7900 and that's helped push the pair lower to 0.7958 along the with the USD demand, USDCAD nudging back up to 1.2650 from 1.2615
Bitcoin has had a down n up session, drifting into $9400 from $9800 then nudging back up to $9700.
Oil has drifted a little lower, while Gold has run into a few sellers after good rally in early Asian trading as the USD supply kicked in.
No data of real note to come but we do have CB talking heads in Bullard Draghi and Cunliffe.
