Forex Blog

CPI release for January along with some moderate data on housing lifted traders’ expectations and spurred some good growth of the U.S. dollar with both EUR/USD and GBP/USD losing about a half percent for the day. It may be a good sign for the dollar bulls eventually as it is almost definite now that the recession is either ending or is not going to happen at all.

January CPI grew at the same pace as in December — 0.4% up above the expected by the markets 0.3% growth.

Housing starts during the same month increased from 1,004k to 1,012k, but were slightly below the expected 1,015k level, while building permits decreased from 1,080k to 1,048k and were slightly above the expectations (1,040k).

Euro tries to reclaim the pips it lost yesterday during one of the strongest falls of the recent days. Yesterday EUR/USD lost 152 pips or more than 1% of its rate. Today only a small recovering is seen with no more than 30 pips trailback, which can be easily accounted to the technical correction. Overall picture of the EUR/USD daily chart more and more reassembles the “head and shoulders” pattern. Some average fundamental data were released today and are not currently affecting the dollar.

Housing data from U.S. was disappointing today. Building permits in December fell by a larger extent than it was expected going down 1,162,000 to 1,068,000. Meanwhile the housing starts for the same month dropped to 1,006,000 from 1,173,000 (revised from 1,187,000).

Initial jobless claims fell down by 21,000 and were at just 301,000 last week, while growth from 322,000 to 335,000 was expected by the market analysts.

Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s business activity index in January unexpectedly fell to -20.9, the lowest value since the October 2001, when it fell down after 9/11 attacks.

Dollar remains almost unchanged against euro even after the release of the U.S. housing data. EUR/USD grew up by about 16 pips only for the whole day with the main movement direction changing constantly. Supported by the yesterday data on the net foreign purchases, dollar doesn’t want to give up positions even after the not so good data in the real estate sector.

U.S. Census Bureau released the New Residential Construction report for November. The new building permits in November was at 1,152k annualized. That’s compared to 1,170k in October and to 1,150k expected for this month. New housing starts annualized rate in November was at 1.187k - well below 1.232k in October, but slightly above the expected 1.175k.

EUR/USD is hitting its all-time record high level beyond 1.4800 after the pessimistic analysts’ forecasts on housing data appeared to be almost completely true today. Housing Starts for the October grew to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.229 million, compared to 1.193 million in September and 1.175 million expected for this month. Meanwhile Building Permits dropped significantly - October seasonally adjusted annual rate appeared 1.178 million, compared to 1.261 million in September and 1.200 million expected by the market for this month. Significant dropdown in new building permits will eventually lower the housing starts numbers in future, thus the all-negative market reaction to this housing report.

Federal Open Market Committee released the minutes for their October 30/31 meeting today. As it was generally expected by the traders, the concerns of FOMC are slowly but surely moving from inflation to a possible economical slowdown on the background of the housing crisis, the subprime lending crisis and unemployment destabilization in U.S. These were also the first minutes to include Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank Presidents projections of the future economy development. Actually, those projections don’t look very informative to me (with a high possible forecast error and all the numbers to close to the current), but it is a good sign that FOMC will share its views regularly and formally, without traders having to guess “what did they mean by that node”-style. Here is the introduction of the projections from the minutes:

The Committee then resumed its discussion of an enhanced role for the economic projections that are made periodically by the members of the Board of Governors and the Reserve Bank presidents. At this meeting, participants reached a consensus on increasing the frequency and expanding the content of the projections that in the past have been released to the public in summary form twice a year. They agreed to publish with the minutes a summary of participants’ economic projections made for this meeting and to release a press statement describing the plan for the future. The release of more frequent forecasts covering longer time spans and accompanied by explanations of those forecasts was seen as providing the public with more context for understanding the Committee’s monetary policy decisions.

I hope that FOMC will continue to improve its information sharing services and these projections will start to offer a more clear picture of the market to the traders soon.