Currencies
EUR/USD – moved up towards the resistance around the 1.12 level before moving down after the better than expected data out of the US. The most important events in the market today are all USD related and are first the GDP data out of the US followed by the speech of FED chair Yellen. While it is not certain she will give any hints regarding monetary policy, the speech will be closely watched.
USD/JPY – we didn’t reach the support yesterday, although we got very close and are currently headed towards the resistance again. Inflation in Japan is still negative, which makes it much harder for the BOJ to reach its inflation target, and as such it will be very interesting to see what the BOJ will decide regarding the stimulus in around 2 weeks from now.
GBP/USD – the resistance in combination with the weaker than expected GDP data was indeed enough to stop the GBP in its tracks, for now. We have tried to breach the resistance also in the beginning of the month and failed, leading to a big drop.
Commodities
Gold – even though the USD weakened, the better than expected data out of the US caused gold to move further down and break below the support. The more good data we get out of the US, the higher the chance of an interest rate hike, which is not good for gold. The GDP data and the speech of Yellen will be further possible indicators of what is in store next month.
Oil – managed to cross the $50 a barrel mark for the first time since October 2015 – 7 months, but was not able to remain above this level and moved down. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as the 50 level is a psychological level and it was to be expected that we would see some profit taking around that level.
Stocks
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (Google) – won a lawsuit started by Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) regarding copyright issues which could have cost the company up to $9 billion.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) – is possibly interested in making its own media content. An idea was floated in the past to buy Time Warner, but that idea didn’t get far. Nonetheless, creating content is something that would make sense, especially in combination with the Apple TV.
By Shawn Koopman