The Dollar and Yen were steady to end the week as declines on Wall Street carried over to Asia, stemming any demand for risk as traders trimmed positions ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday week. Although most risk pairs ended the day close to flat, the trade day was cut into three distinct parts. The first part of the day was a quick run up in the risk currencies prior to the Tokyo fix, pushing the dollar and yen to session lows.
Once the fix was concluded the second move involved a selloff of risk, pushing the dollar and yen to subsequent daily highs. The final chapter to the day was a late run up in gold which pulled the dollar and yen back near opening levels.
Using the EUR/USD in the above formula, we had an open near 1.4915, a move to 1.4935 highs into the fix, an ensuing drop to session lows near 1.4885, and a push to 1.4920 on the back of the gold move late in the day. Plugging in the GBP/USD to this equation, we have a 1.6675 to 1.6615 range, AUD/USD, 0.9215 to 0.9150, and NZD/USD moved between 0.7330 and 0.7250 for the session. A good deal of the moves could be attributed to traders squaring positions ahead of the long weekend in Japan.
The moves in the yen crosses were identical as the top and bottom of their ranges were forged before and after the Tokyo fix. USD/JPY was dead in the water once again today, failing to break out of a 20 pip range between 88.85 and 89.05. Overall the flow seemed light and choppy today, and as usual, the yen failed to budge when the Bank of Japan left the call rate unchanged at 0.10% as expected.
Spot gold made a strong late day climb from session lows of $1139.00 to $1145.00 highs by the London morning, pulling the risk currencies back near unchanged as mentioned. Waves of profit taking in New York had dropped the precious metal as low as $1130.00 in what some traders called an ''overbought'' commodity.
With light data later in London and no data out of the US tomorrow, expect trading to be light as investors prepare for the three day weekend in Japan as well as the Thanksgiving Holiday shortened week upcoming in the US. Have a nice weekend.
