Opportunities Appear In USD/JPY And EUR/USD

 | Mar 19, 2014 05:04AM ET

Markets rose on Tuesday, continuing their advance off last week’s lows, as tension in Crimea dispersed and US housing data buoyed stock market investors. In currencies, the US dollar held its ground, while the British pound dropped and the euro reversed early losses.

Looking ahead, the big event of the week will be the FOMC interest rate decision and meeting, which is now underway.

Looking at the fundamentals this week, our analysis identifies opportunities in the USD/JPY and EUR/USD based on the COT (Commitment of Traders) reports and open position statistics.

h2 USD/JPY/h2

A look at the COT reports for the USD/JPY shows that net non-commercial positions have stabilised around the -85,000 mark and unsurprisingly, this has seen USD/JPY fall back to 101.45.

According to the chart, dollar yen is nearing an important inflection point here that could see the currency move back towards 100.

As long as net commercial positions remain around the negative 50k - 85k mark, bias in the currency is likely to be on the bearish side with any resurgence in USD/JPY not likely to happen until the second half of the year.