Yellen

In his first appearance before Congress, Jerome Powell, new chair of the Federal Reserve painted an optimistic picture of the US economy. In his comments to the House Financial Services Committee Powell highlighted strength in the jobs market and strong business investment as reasons to remain optimistic about the outlook of the economy and confirmed that the Fed would continue to bolster strong growth

GBP/USD has been on a rollercoaster ride today and could still see more volatility to come. GBP/USD dropped in early trade as the UK unemployment level unexpectedly ticked higher to 4.4%, from 4.3%. UK earnings growth was also interpreted as soft, giving investors little reason to cheer. Wage growth at 2.5% still remains firmly below inflation at 3%, meaning that there is no sign of the squeeze on the consumer letting up. Following the release GBP/USD sold off to $1.3908.

The main market stories over the weekend included positive news for Athens, the IMF will now provide cash, to the tune of EUR 5 bn, […]

Janet Yellen gave a fairly upbeat testimony to the Senate Banking Committee today, saying that waiting too long to remove accommodation would be “unwise”, and […]

After what feels like an eternity, the most important Fed meeting of the year is upon us. The Fed Fund Futures market is pricing in […]

CPI data out later this morning is worth watching for a couple of reasons, it is expected to rise to 1.1%, which would be the […]

The US Federal Reserve meeting is likely to Trump every other economic data point, at least in the first half of this week. The bank […]

European equity markets have failed to make much progress one way or the other this week, kicking the week off and ending it at more […]

Risk off sentiment is expected to remain the dominating theme throughout the morning, with investors reluctant to make any major moves ahead of another flurry […]

The US dollar is attempting to make a comeback after being hammered on Friday on the back of a very poor jobs report from the […]

As we noted yesterday, market volatility was expected to pick up as we moved through the week as the top-tier data releases and traders at […]

It’s been an exceedingly slow start to the week with most of Europe out of the office for an extended holiday weekend, but trade is […]

As we noted in yesterday’s FOMC Preview report, any Fed fireworks wouldn’t come from the monetary policy decision per se, but rather how today’s meeting […]

The world’s most widely-traded currency pair has garnered its fair share of headlines over the last week, but heading into this afternoon’s monetary policy announcement […]

Last week and this week mark an unusual confluence of central bank meetings; Already this month, we’ve heard from the Bank of Canada (on hold), […]

As everyone expected, the European Central Bank’s monetary policy meeting was the marquee market event of last week, even if the market’s interpretation of its […]

In yesterday’s preview report, we highlighted how traders might look at today’s FOMC minutes as staler than Grandma’s cereal after the market volatility and mixed […]

In a bit of an off week for top-tier US economic data, traders are likely to focus intently on the release of tomorrow’s FOMC minutes. […]

Nothing like a crazy day in the markets to get the old blood flowing again. In our research here, we typically focus on specific opportunities […]

It’s been a busy day so far for central bankers, especially in Japan and the US. As we noted on Monday, the yen has seen […]

As a trader, it’s difficult to predict the impact of a major trading hub being closed. More often than not, it leads to slow, lackluster […]

After Friday’s not-as-bad-as-it-appeared NFP report, traders were optimistic that we would see risk sentiment return with Chinese markets on holiday this week, but so far […]