US Retail Sales to dictate the price action at the end of this week

General market theme
The big story in the currency markets remains the Dollar’s weakness and when it will end and up until this point there is no clear answer to this question. With the Fed clearly hinting that further tightening this year is not to be considered a certainty and financial markets remaining in a state of elevated volatility the Dollar’s outlook hangs in the balance. Looking ahead we will focus our attention on the short-term outlook of the major currencies while they remain under threat of further weakness on the back of their central banks’ biases: the ECB is always ready to ease more at any time, the Fed has concerns about the domestic economy and the BoE is far away from even thinking to raise rates.

Price action highlights
On the back of the extended weakness in the Dollar caused by Fed’s unwillingness to guarantee further rate hikes at this time the Euro managed to extend its rally higher. As we hinted above the current rate of the Euro doesn’t represent its true value but nevertheless the Single currency traded to the 1.1375 area and this morning is testing the 1.1300 support. As long as the Dollar remains in the backseat the Euro will have a bullish outlook but we should always remind ourselves that this rally is not pleasing for the ECB and it could change quickly at any time.

The Cable pushed lower yesterday morning to test the 1.4400 support but the decline didn’t last for long as the rest of the day the UK currency recovered against the Dollar and at the time of typing the rate is testing the 1.4500 resistance level. The focus today will be on the Eurozone and the US with reports from both fronts so we expect the Cable to trade on the back of the flows from the Dollar.

Focus of the day
Early in the morning the release of the German and – a couple of hours later – Eurozone GDP levels is the first important report of the day and the bias here is to the downside. It will be interesting to see how unfazed the Euro will be on the back of the potentially bearish reports today while later in the day the most important release at the end of the week is the Retail Sales figures. The levels in the consumer spending report can print either way and we expect the Dollar to react to this report as the consumer market is important to the Fed’s agenda.