Earlier today, we were expecting the ECB president Mario Draghi to provide some action for forex traders. We even manually closed our forex signal in EUR/USD before he started the speech, but he gave nothing for the market to chew.

The FOMC minutes was a different story though; I wasn´t expecting much from them but it was enough for a 50 pip dive in USD pairs. It also gave us more than a handful of pips which came from the NZD/USD signal.   

The minutes, which are from the last FED meeting, were sort of hawkish, which is what everyone was expecting. But the Buck didn´t resist – it lost around 40-50 pips against most major currencies.

Most FED officials agreed that “tightening likely appropriate soon”, so the June rate hike remains almost 100% certain, as previously. There were a lot of other hawkish comments there as well.  

But, they expressed concerns about inflation. They said that “Progress on inflation goals” has slowed. So, this might have been one of the reasons for the USD weakness that followed the minutes.

Now that I think of it, though, the lack of details and clarity for the monetary tightening path might have disappointed the market a little, because it could have been expecting some sort of guide for the coming rate hikes, which the minutes lacked.

So, the USD ended up lower at the end of the day, but at least we made some pips from all this. I don´t know if this weakness will continue tomorrow as well, but the forex market might be sitting on the sidelines until the US unemployment claims are released in the afternoon.