Holiday Trading Conditions Commence

 | Dec 22, 2014 05:09AM ET

KEY DATA RELEASES TODAY:

1500GMT USD Existing Home Sales exp 5.21M v 5.26M

OVERNIGHT:

A very quiet start to the week in Asia ahead of the Tokyo holiday tomorrow and the Christmas holidays later in the week. Asian equity markets are broadly higher, WTI crude is also hanging onto its gains post last week’s lows of 54.05, while the USD is marginally lower against most majors as it digests last week’s gains.

USDJPY did little in Asia with the Tokyo holiday tomorrow and upcoming Christmas holidays later this week side lining many. A number of Tokyo players already look to have finished up for the year. Most Tokyo businesses officially close for the year Friday and don’t return till January 5. USDJPY traded mostly around massive option expirations at 119.50 ($2.552 bln to expire mostly at the New York cut). An outlier to 119.66 was seen early and others down to 119.31 thereafter. Despite the up bias, a broadly soggy USD provided headwind. EURJPY was better bid, up modestly from 145.98 to 146.20 with EURUSD bid.

EURUSD opened in Asia at 1.2226 after falling during thin US trading Friday with USD gaining across the board. In line with the Friday trend, it eased to 1.2220 early. EURUSD looks to remain under pressure in the short-run with the market ever more convinced of ECB sovereign bond buying or QE at their January 22 meeting. The market also looks to be pricing in the start of the Fed tightening cycle in June.Some see late April as a possibility if US data surprises to the upside.

Looking ahead, the economic data schedule is concentrated on the first half of the week with US Q3 GDP revision tomorrow the highlight. Today, we get Eurozone consumer confidence and existing home sales from the US.

OVERNIGHT PRICE ACTION:

EUR: New year to date lows
GBP: Rotation in lower end of 2 month range
JPY: Attempting to break short term resistance to retest year to date highs
CAD: Continued consolidation at highs
AUD: Consolidating at multi year lows

KEY TRADES:

FX Pair Short Term Position/Date Entry Level Target Stop Comments
EURUSD Bearish Await new signal
GBPUSD Bearish Await new signal
USDJPY Neutral Await new signal
USDCAD Bullish BUY 9th DEC 1.1495 1.1695 1.1545 Risk Free
AUDUSD Bearish Await new signal
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ANALYSIS:

EURUSD Short Term (1-3 Days): Bearish – Medium Term (1-3 Weeks) Bearish

  • New year to date lows, projected trend channel support eyed below
  • Order Flow indicators; OBV consolidating at lower levels, Linear Regression and Psychology bearish
  • Watching price action for short set ups at better risk reward entries