And the Asian week ends with a whimper as most FX pairs trade in small ranges to conclude the US holiday shortened week. As mentioned yesterday, now that the holiday in the US and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai are yesterday's news, the markets will now set their sights on the coming ECB, BoE and FOMC meetings in early December. As many assumed that the US key rate would be lowered from its current 1% at the December meeting on December 15th and 16th, the Dollar lost some footing against both the Yen and the Euro. Against the Euro, the Dollar lost strength from 1.2879 and made a nice quiet move to dollar lows of 1.2915 in what was a trading session reminiscent of days of yesteryear. USD/JPY fell from early highs of 95.58 to hit a session low of 95.15 before getting corralled into a range at 95.25ish levels. Other currency pairs just traded sideways for the week end, including GBP/USD and AUD/USD. EUR/JPY moved a bit between 122.65 and 123.31 but ultimately ended up closing the session where it opened. With the US stock market closed earlier, their was not much fuel for the movement of the Yen crosses.
Besides the FED, the ECB and BoE are also scheduled to meet next week and the accepted opinion is that rate cuts up to 100 basis points can be expected for both central banks. The FX markets will look for new direction tomorrow in the US when stocks will resume trading until 1pm EST and US Retail Sales data is due.
Upcoming Economic Data Releases (London Session):
| 11/28/2008 | 7:45 | FR | Producer Prices (MoM) | OCT | -0.40% | -0.40% |
| 11/28/2008 | 7:45 | FR | Producer Prices (YoY) | OCT | 6.10% | 5.00% |
| 11/28/2008 | 10:00 | EC | Euro-Zone CPI Estimate (YoY) | NOV | 3.20% | 2.40% |
| 11/28/2008 | 10:00 | EC | Euro-Zone Unemployment Rate | OCT | 7.50% | 7.60% |
| 11/28/2008 | 11:00 | UK | U.K. CBI November Distributive Trades Report | 28-Nov |
