Euro drifting ahead of Powell speech

After a strong start to the week, the euro has been quiet. The lack of movement is continuing on Friday, as EUR/USD is trading at 1.1759, up 0.06% on the day.

Markets cautious ahead of Powell

The Jackson Hole Symposium is usually a hobnob of central bankers and other key officials, but the pandemic has rained on this year’s party. The event has been scaled down from two days to just one, and the meeting will be virtual in order to comply with health restrictions. Still, the star of the show, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, will deliver a speech to the markets, and his comments will be reviewed with a fine-tooth comb. Investors are cautious ahead of the speech, as US data has become softer and the Covid Delta variation is weighing on the market’s nerves.

Ahead of Powell’s speech, three Fed members urged the Fed to speed up its plans to taper its bond purchases. The three members, Robert Kaplan, James Bullard and Esther George, are non-voting members in 2021 and are known as hawks. Powell will likely be more cautious than the threesome were in their TV interviews this week and may lay low and not say very much today. This will give the Fed more time to analyse economic data ahead of the September policy meeting.

In Europe, the ECB minutes from the July policy meeting indicated that the ECB’s revised forward guidance was not unanimous. Most members supported the new guidance, which states that the ECB will not raise rates unless there is evidence that inflation will persist “durably” at the two percent target. Inflation has been well below this target for years but is expected to overshoot the two percent level this year. This means that the central bank policymakers are expected to discuss at the September meeting the timing of a taper of a pandemic emergency bond programme. Still, the ECB is lagging behind the Fed when it comes to tapering and is unlikely to announce any timelines for tapering before December at the earliest.

.

EUR/USD Technical

  • With the euro showing limited movement, support and resistance levels remain unchanged this week
  • There are resistance lines at 1.1779 and 1.1859
  • On the downside, we find support lines at 1.1642 and 1.1585

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Kenny Fisher

Kenny Fisher

Market Analyst at OANDA
A highly experienced financial market analyst with a focus on fundamental analysis, Kenneth Fisher’s daily commentary covers a broad range of markets including forex, equities and commodities. His work has been published in several major online financial publications including Investing.com, Seeking Alpha and FXStreet. Based in Israel, Kenny has been a MarketPulse contributor since 2012.