The Calm Before the Storm

A whole string of bank holidays to start the week with Japan off (again!) in observance of Health-Sports Day, while the US and Canada are also off for Columbus Day and Thanksgiving respectively. The most notable to Forex markets is of course the US holiday, but just remember that today sees US bond markets closed while stock markets remain open. Forex markets will likely see reduced liquidity to start the week with the possibility of erratic price action on the back of it.

The International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting kicked off over the weekend in Lima, Peru with a backdrop of rising concern over global economic health. The major headline to come out of the weekend was from the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang who noted that a persistent weakening of the Chinese Yuan would be inconsistent with the fundamentals of the Chinese economy. He went on to reinstate that China is committed to making the planned nature of the currency more market based.

While stating that they will look to continue unwinding their firm grip around management of the Yuan, Yi Gang also did his best to talk up the fundamental base in China as good news that will prevent the Renminbi from depreciating too much.

Speaking at the CFA Society Milwaukee, the weekend headlines also included the following from Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans:

“We think that just delaying the fed funds rate liftoff currently until about the middle of 2016 and then a gradual path would be consistent with us getting inflation back up to 2% within a reasonable period of time.”

“I would like it to move up more quickly than that, but at the moment we are thinking that that’s what appropriate policy would be.”

Normally you would assume that the Chinese are giving lip service and you can bank on guidance from the US Federal Reserve. As I said on Friday however, the Fed is suffering from a crisis of credibility and in this case I’d be more inclined to take the most steed from the Chinese comments out of Peru!

Enjoy your relatively slow start to the week, it’s just the calm before the storm.

On the Calendar Monday:
Amazing!

“Japanese banks will be closed in observance of Health-Sports Day”

JPY Bank Holiday
CAD Bank Holiday
USD Bank Holiday

USD FOMC Member Lockhart Speaks

Chart of the Day:
EUR/JPY is a Forex cross that I haven’t had on my watch list for a while now, but it’s time to bring it back for a look.

EUR/JPY Daily:

The daily chart has coiled into a triangle, with the most recent touch of trend line resistance coinciding with a horizontal SR zone that has been tested all over the place in the past.

These are the sorts of setups that you have to be careful fading because zooming into the hourly chart, you can see that buyers had huge momentum behind them to end the week. Now price has come into a higher time frame sell zone, I’ll be keeping an eye on the lower time frame charts for signs of momentum failing into any sort of short term confluence of resistance, but not going to pull the trigger at first sight.