The USD remains in vogue

The USD was stronger versus nearly all the G10 today with exception to the JPY as ‘risk’ was decidedly off today. Investor sentiment was rather battered early on as the realization that the EU summit was likely to achieve very little begun to set in. Later in the day the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold President Obama’s healthcare plan by a 5-4 vote, sending equities to fresh session lows before recovering later in the day. As a result this saw the USD rally across the spectrum of asset classes – Gold went down to test below $1550 briefly, Silver tested the prior September & December 2011 lows around $26.15/25, US Oil (WTI) broke to a fresh 2012 low before it gave up some of those gains into the close.

In FX, we saw GBP/USD test below 1.55 the figure and the Aussie test below parity. Other majors tested critical levels of significance as well: NZD/USD sees a critical horizontal pivot around 0.7840/45, USD/CAD tested a briefly above a key intraday high from 6/8 around 1.0355, USD/JPY sees a critical support level around 79.20 and the Swissy tested the 6/5 high near 0.9675 before backing away. Interestingly, CAD/JPY has begun to see a pickup in its downward acceleration – As suggested in last week’s FX QUANT LAB. Ultimately, the lack of decisiveness in market conviction still abounds as witnessed by European bourses which finished mixed on the day – DAX: -1.27%, CAC: -0.37%, IBEX: +0.82% & FTSE MIB: +0.67%.

Intriguingly, news has just hit the wires that German Chancellor Merkel has canceled the EU summit press conference tonight, whereby we were expecting to hear something, anything, to try to buoy this nervous ‘risk’ environment. A bit surprisingly, U.S. equities actually rallied shortly thereafter into the close – The Dow Jones Industrial Average1 finished lower by about -0.20% and S&P5001 fell by around -0.22%, however some believe this rally was attributable to headlines that the EU summit is working on immediate measures to address Spain and Italy.

On the data front for the upcoming Asia/Pacific session is the release of New Zealand May Building Permits, UK June Consumer Confidence, Japan’s May Jobs figures, Japan May CPI & Tokyo June CPI, Japan May Industrial Production, Australian May Private Sector Credit, New Zealand May Money Supply and Japan’s May Housing Starts.

Источник: Forex.com

28.06.2012