Today we will learn about several important figures of the Eurozone, on a day in which the EU finance ministers have a meeting. It should be said the importance of Eurozone ministers and government policies is becoming increasingly irrelevant – governments just go on doing what they have been doing, leaving the main decisions that affect market prices to be made by central banks.
After learning last week that the Eurozone economy is even weaker than what was expected, today’s figures should only confirm its anemia. This is bearish for the EUR, which, since the beginning of May, has been sharply losing ground against the USD. This is in line with the predictions of Ridge Capital Markets, where we have been bullish on the USD all along.
We still believe that a long USD/EUR position should continue making a profitable trade for investors. Financial and currency markets are seeing again the USD rising (something which we have always expected), with the DXY staying comfortably above 95 points and inching upwards – after a short and not overly dramatic correction. Long-term, we see the DXY reaching 100 points.
This ties in to the statements by FOMC members in the recent days. Several Fed members have been making consecutive statements about how expectable a rate hike in June should be. Essentially, we believe that, as markets have been tremendously complacent about the Fed and its lately perceived dovish policy, Fed members are trying to get traders less complacent, and the market a bit less confident on bullish views.
Today we will hear more statements of Fed members, which we believe will probably stay on this hawkish page, but, at the end of the day, it is the ‘Yellen word’ that traders should pay more attention to.
At Ridge Capital Markets, we consider more likely for the Fed to possibly raise rates in July, since doing so in the middle of June, a week before the UK “Brexit/Bremain” referendum, could send too heavy waves of shock that Yellen would hardly want to start.
Still, for now we believe that the DXY is a good play, that going long USD/EUR is a trade that should go on paying off, and that gold should stay correcting down to the $1,200 frontier, pressured by the USD – so a very short-term gold short may also be a trader opportunity not to be missed (we say this while being very bullish in a long-term outlook).