Forex news from the European trading session – May 19, 2020
Securities:
Markets:
- NZD in the lead, JPY late on the day
- Slightly lower European equities; E-minis up 0.1%
- US 10-year yields remain stable at 0.73%
- Gold dish at $ 1,732.60
- WTI up 2.8% to $ 32.70
- Bitcoin up 0.9% to $ 9,763
It was a largely turbulent session for stocks, but the currencies mostly ignored the fluctuations and continued with the trading theme yesterday, that is, selling the dollar, the yen.
European equities started the session with great optimism, recording gains of around 1% before losing everything at opening time, then falling further.
But as we look to North American trading, these losses are reduced and the same is observed for American futures also in the last hour.
The dollar and the yen eased throughout the session, with the BOJ also calling for an unanticipated political meeting to probably introduce more political measures on Friday.
This helped keep pressure on the yen as we see the USD / JPY run up to 107.75 from around 107.30 levels at the start of the session.
The sale of the dollar continued as we see the EUR / USD posting new two-week highs, going from 1.0920 to 1.0975 and testing its 100-day moving average.
The kiwi was the biggest winner, with the currency dropping from 0.6050 to 0.6100. The Aussie is also higher against the dollar and the yen, but the gains are more moderate in the midst of escalating tensions between Australia and China amid the coronavirus spat.
AUD / USD was reduced to 0.6020 thanks to more possible economic action from China, but quickly rebounded from risk flows to stabilize around the levels of 0.6040-50 currently.
It’s still a flow of risk, so let’s see if Wall Street can build on yesterday’s strong moves and if the S&P 500 Index can challenge its key daily moving averages later today.