The U.S. Dollar Index fell for the third time in a row

The U.S. Dollar Index (USDIDX) declined for the third consecutive time on Wednesday. The March FOMC Minutes disappointed Forex market participants. Previously, they assumed that the discount rate in the U.S. would reach 2.25% at the end of 2016. But it was noted in yesterday's FOMC Minutes that such predictions are overrated. Now the majority of investors still believe that the first increase in U.S. interest rates will be occurred in July next year. However, there is no consensus so far on how high the Fed would raise them. In general, investors considered the FOMC Minutes as a step towards the monetary policy easing. It caused a significant increase in the U.S. stock indices along with the Dollar weakening. We believe that now they can start moving in the opposite phase to the U.S. Dollar Index. This may be a good point to create a personal composite instrument. Today at 13-30 CET, we will see the U.S. labor market weekly data. The preliminary forecasts are positive. That may support the USD.

The UK trade deficit in February fell to 9.09 billion Pounds from 9.46 billion Pounds in January. This has strengthened the British Pound (GBPUSD). Today at 12:00 CET, we expect the BOE meeting. The BOE is expected to maintain the interest rates at the current level of 0.5% and the redemption volume in the amount of 375 billion Pounds. Most of market participants expect the rate hike in the UK to 0.25% in April 2015. Today's announcement by the Bank of England (after the meeting) can refute or reinforce this projection. Also today at 9:00 CET, we will see the monthly economic review by the ECB, which may affect the Euro (EURUSD).

The Australian Dollar (AUDUSD) continued its growth due to unexpectedly good macroeconomic data. Unemployment fell in March to 5.8% although it was expected that would be kept at the February level of 6.1%. The decrease in total imports to China for March by 11.3% did not have a negative impact on the Aussie. Since the iron ore imports increased by 21%. China is a major buyer of raw materials from Australia and iron ore sales bring the biggeat revenue. The next important Australian economic data will be released only on April 23th.

Most of commodity futures fell yesterday due to weak Chinese foreign trade economic data for March. Exports collapsed unexpectedly by 6.6% compared to the same period of last year. It happened for the second time in a row, for the first time since 2009. However, imports fell even more, by 11.3%. This allowed China to get a trade surplus of $ 7.7 B after the deficit of $ 23B a month earlier. China is the largest importer of all kinds of raw materials in the world. We believe that the economic information was not that bad in general. Its negative impact on futures prices may be short-lived.

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a monthly review with projections for grains. The corn stocks in the United States for the season 2013/2014 were revised downwards by 75 million bushels to 1.331 billion bushels. This caused a short-term price growth, but it got down by the results of the day. The Wheat prices dropped immediately when the USDA raised its forecast for the world reserves to 186.68 million tons. The Soyb prices have grown on the basis of Wednesday results. The forecast for its inventory was reduced immediately by 10 million bushels to 10-yrs minimum.

As we predicted in the previous review, the Oil kept rising because of the next problem with oil exports from Libya and the reduction of gasoline stocks in the United States this week to 5.19 million barrels. This is more than the increase in oil reserves by 4.03 million over the same period.