US Market Wrap

As has been the case of recent times, the good news only lasts for one session as the gains from the vaccine hype started to slow.

The US equity markets all gave up their gains, albeit with a small loss, while the risk-on forex pairs, such as the AUD/USD and NZD/USD all slowed down.

The Greenback is the interesting one at the moment as it remains very weak and that is propping up the majors across the board.

Data-wise, the main number yesterday US retail and that came in slightly weaker than anticipated, adding to the selling pressure.

The Data Agenda

All the focus today on the data side of things is really going to be CPI. We are seeing some CPI prints from across Europe and in Canada and the lacklustre numbers are one of the things that would be keeping the central bankers awake at night.

In the UK, CPI is expected to be negative at -0.1%, while in the EU we have a worse number ahead of -0.3%. In Canada, the hope is the monthly figure will be able to remain in the positive.

In the US, building permits are continuing to remain strong, while later in the session, we get the weekly WTI crude inventory levels.

Forex Signal Update

The FX Leaders Team found 1 winner from 2 trades yesterday, as the risk-on assets fell away. 

NZD/USD – Active Signal 

The NZD/USD has been quite strong recently, on the back of the vaccine news and also the RBNZ signalling negative rates are unlikely. We are long here.

AUD/USD – Active Signal 

The AUD/USD has been whipping around quite a bit and we are short under strong resistance at 0.7340.

Cryptocurrency Update

BTC has rallied just as we suspected it might – however, it well and truly outperformed in the last 24 hours.

Price broke out through the first key target at $17,000 before charging to $18,000. We often see these breaks followed by a period of consolidation so this will be a level to watch.

Just how far BTC can run is hard to predict, but the team have put together some analysis on what might be in store.