Summary:
- EURUSD falls below last week’s low and 1.20
- US stocks near all-time highs in quiet trade
- DE30 begins the week with small gains
- Oil setting up for a pullback?
- Crypto markets sell-off
There’s been some downside seen in the EURUSD today with the market continuing lower and breaking below the 1.20 level after failing to break higher following the NFP release on Friday. With the current level of speculative positioning extremely long there is some suggestion that the market could be primed for a further drop.
US stock markets have been fairly subdued after ending last week at record highs with the US500, US100 and US30 all trading close to their recent peaks on the European close. A close above 2740 for the US500 tonight could be seen to be a positive signal as that would record a 2% gain in the first 5 trading days of the year. On the 15 occasions that this has happened previously the market has always ended the year higher and returned on average more than 18%.
The DE30 has also been fairly quiet after recent strong gains. The market has managed to record a slight gain during the European session and a technical overview can be found here.
Brent Oil recorded a third strong weekly gain on Friday evening and in doing so ended the week at its highest weekly closing level since November 2014 – when OPEC stood pat and let the price tumble to try and restrict the growth of US shale production and the market has one of its largest weekly declines in recent years. Today there’s been a little softness in the trade and any reversal signals here could be seen to present attractive short opportunities.
After earlier moving higher to post a record peak above 1200, there’s been a pretty sharp pullback in Ethereum which now trades pretty much flat on the day. All other crypto markets are in the red with Bitcoin falling around 10% and dropping back below the 15000 level. Headlines that South Korean regulators are inspecting 6 banks, including Industrial Bank of Korea, that provide virtual accounts to companies related to cryptocurrency has sparked the selling pressure.