Asia / Eur Opening Analysis

Written by Research | 19 July 2010

On the Technical Front & a Fundamental re-cap:

Stocks had sizeable gains heading into the end of the week as better-than-expected earnings from several corporate giants helped stimulate buying interest. But the major indices turned into the red after posting a deep 2.9% loss Friday. An earnings miss at Google and a sharp decrease in the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index spurred the selling pressure.

Decline in consumer confidence may be attributed to a stubbornly high unemployment rate in the United States that has investors questioning the health of the world’s largest economy. The fall in the U.S. stock market may serve as another catalyst for the massive decrease. All in all, consumers remain fearful of policy changes, while weak housing prices, high unemployment, and tight credit conditions continue to weigh on sentiment.

A short recap of the closing price movement last Friday have been expected as the corrective moves for the Aussie and New Zealand dollars were simply a profit-taking of earlier long positions. For some who managed to shift or made position adjustments were caught on their late positions.

The EURUSD and the GBPUSD as the Friday closing have failed to give any significant higher moves. Although, the more active correction came when the New Zealand dollar did go back to 0.7038 from a week's high of 0.7301. Meanwhile, the Asian and early European sessions were mostly influenced with Friday's wall street lower closing, hence leaving investors to damp some of their earlier stock holdings.

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The pressured market gave in with a mixture and still bearish sentiments of the US economic direction as the USDX has retrieved to the 82.10 psychological support price. A daily USD recovery as most have been expecting with the slight correction lower of the EURUSD, Although the GBPUSD has held firm and currently working at the 1.5340 and 1.2966 respectively for both pairs. A continuing case scenario will still prevail the market sentiments has not change.

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The USDJPY at these levels of 86.81 is not too far from their support levels of 84.79 registered on the week of Nov. 22, 2009. With that said the likely scenario in line with the USDCHF low of 1.0398 last week was not too far from our last week's market price call at 1.0380 and a slight recovery currently at the 1.0450 as of this writing.

The succeeding reports for the week with the US housing starts , existing homes sales, leading indicators would be something to watch. However, the UK GDP for the quarter and year report would signify a tremendous boost if and when figures would be better than most expects. Still the prevailing USD directional trend would be the best indicator to analyze in the mid-term.