This week’s trading session began with the quarterly release of the Japanese Preliminary GDP data, which declined once again and reached -0.4%, down from -0.2% of November’s release. That drove the USD/JPY to recover from the Thursday’s one-year low, with the pair’s retesting 114.00 resistance this morning.
The Chinese trade balance data, released by the General Administration of Customs in the early morning has optimistically surprised traders when the results came to US$ 406 billion, up from the expected US$ 389 billion. Following that, yuan was strengthening for the ninth consecutive day, with USD/CNY trading at 6.4857, the pair’s ten-week low.
Oil price continued to recover as speculations that major oil producers were close to agree on the production cuts encouraged investors. That followed last week’s statement of the United Arab Emirates’ Energy Minister that the OPEC is ready to cooperate subject to the major non-OPEC producers also agreeing to such actions.
Oversupply was the major reason for the oil price collapse during the past two years, when the commodity’s value plummeted to one fourth of the value of the middle 2014. Nevertheless, up to now the biggest producers among whom are Saudi Arabia and Russia were reluctant to reduce the supply, with the intent to regain the market share from the smaller competitors out.
Today’s events will be highlighted by the European Central Bank president’s quarterly testimony to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. The speech will be closely scrutinized by investors as they will be looking for the hints of the further monetary policy easing this March after Mario Draghi's comments last month that he would “review and possibly reconsider” monetary stimulus at the next ECB meeting.
The New Zealand’s quarterly Retail Sales announcement will close this day at 21:45 London time. The primary gauge of consumer spending is expected to decrease to 1.4% down from 1.6% of last time. As the data is an important indicator of the New-Zealand’s economy, high market volatility will likely be observed during the data release.