Summary:
- Euro moving higher after ECB leaves all rates unchanged
- Draghi errs on the dovish side but stops short of any major hints
- Biggest jump in initial jobless claims since 2012 drives Gold to YTD high
- Crude inventories rise the most since March
The highly anticipated ECB meeting didn’t disappoint in terms of market volatility but in effect has left traders none the wiser as to the future path of monetary policy. All the key benchmark rates were kept unchanged and there was no further information on the rate of asset purchases with the current 60bn a month set to run until December 2017.
Viewers were keenly looking for any comments relating to the recent rise in the Euro and Draghi refused to call the currency overvalued during his press conference stating that the “exchange rate is not a policy target.” This comment sparked a flurry of buying in the single currency which moved back above the 1.20 handle against the US dollar, with the latter enduring another bad day.
The drop in the USD today is in part due to the worst initial jobless claims reading in 5 years, with a huge jump to 298k seen in the past week. The release caused an immediate pop higher in Gold with the precious metal recording a fresh 2017 peak today.
Elsewhere in the commodity space, the weekly DOE invenotries also showed a marked increase to 4.6M – the highest level since March. However this increase was fairly widely expected and the price of crude has held up fairly well since the number was announced.
At the beginning of the week we wrote about the report coming from the PBoC where the Chinese central bank decided to crack down on the proliferation of ICOs across China. It seems that some steps have been already taken as more than 40 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) platforms are reportedly suspending their ICO services