The greenback has been under pressure today after a long weekend in US because of the Labor Day in the beginning of this week. The greenback started the week in the defensive side because of the equities market gains and the demand for the higher yielding currencies for taking risk after better than expected economic data from US referring to a diminishing of the recession pressure and the increasing of the inflation outlook which can come accompanied with the recovery which could help the gold to get above 1000$ today. The single currency which was trading in a narrow range in the recent weeks facing a resistance at 1.44 could break it today triggering stop losing orders could push it above 1.45. The market was waiting last week to have a hawkish tone in Trichet speech after the ECB interest rate decision of keeping the interest rate unchanged at 1% but he has expressed his Prudence and caution but the market is looking not patience as him pushing the single currency up across the broad believing in the recovery in EU which can trigger tightening measures later this year by the ECB or at least a staving of its current easing steps for providing liquidity exposing the EUR. The spreading believe in the US recovery could contain the current market sentiment putting pressure on the greenback after better than expected data had come out from US in the recent weeks. We have seen the US labor report of August coming slight better than expected at
-216k and the market was waiting for -233k revising July figure to
-463k from -443k with a rise of the US unemployment rate to 9.7% in August from 9.4% in July and an increasing of the average hourly earnings by .06$ to be 18.65$. These data come after an up revising of US Q2 productivity to 6.6% from 6.4% which show that there is still worries about hiring but the current labor unit is high utilized meeting an increasing of the demand which can be hopeful for the recovery but the investors are really in need to watch the recent improving of the economic performance impact on the labor market after US ISM manufacturing index had come above 50 finally in August reaching 52.9 which is the highest figure since June 2007 reflecting an expansion in the manufacturing sector and we have seen this week too a. continuous improving of the housing market conditions as the US pending home sales of July have come up for the sixth consecutive month by 3.2% after rising of the US new home sales of July too by
9.6% m/m which shows that there is a new demand growing in a faster pace than what was expected but the question now is this is reliable enough to move the growth up in a sustainable way? As Ben Bernenke has hinted recently when he indicated that the worst of the credit crisis is looking behind of us currently and the focusing is now on the current obstacles in front of a reliable economic growth which can produce jobs again and this is the most important waited reason by the Fed's president to start eliminating the fed's quantitive easing steps which is crucial to the forex market.The equity market is still facing resistance in pushing up the stocks further in spite of these recent waited good data. The Dow is still climbing up hardly after failing to break above 9600 as the investors are still in need to believe in this recovery sustainability after pushing Dow up from below 6600 in the 9th of March to the current levels.
Best wishes
FX Consultant Walid Salah El Din E-Mail: snipped-for-privacy@fx-recommends.com