Wow, today our forex trading signals have not done so well. We began our trading day with a profitable trade in the Nikkei. Later, we opened two more trades in Gold and Crude Oil. Initially, both of the trades remained in profit and gave us a chance to drag stops at break even. However during the New York session, both trades closed at stop loss. It's painful, but it's an avoidable situation. All we need to do is to drag our stops at breakeven.

Latest Updates & Their Potential Impacts

U.K – Labor Market Figures

The labor market figures from the United Kingdom remained mixed. The jobless claims were significantly weaker with an increase of 25K and an unemployment rate that stayed unchanged at 4.7%.  

Consequently, we have seen a mixed trend in the market. The GBP/USD initially edged higher, but investors realized that the fundamentals are definitely not supporting a bullish bias.

Interest Rates Decision – Bank of Canada (BOC)

As mentioned in the morning brief, the Bank of Canada left interest rates unchanged at 0.50%. Therefore, we have not seen any major fluctuations in the USD/CAD currency pairs.

The policy statement, on the other hand, remained slightly hawkish. As per the report, the recent economic figures show that growth in the Canadian economy has been faster than expected for the month of January.

If you are wondering if the major dip of 66 pips in the USD/CAD was due to the policy meeting, I can confidently say it wasn't. I can say this because the U.S released the crude oil inventories figures only later.

EIA Reports Crude Oil Inventories

Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a drop in the crude oil inventories by 2.17 million barrels in the previous week. Yup, that was bullish news for the crude oil. But, the market sometimes doesn't behave as expected, that's why we have to follow money management strategies.

As we know, Canada is one of the top oil exporters and its exports contain around 70% of the crude oil. Thus, the drop in crude oil inventories encouraged the sentiment that the prices of crude oil will hike soon. This resulted in the bullish Canadian dollar.