For this week, the market will pay attention to the publication of the minutes of the May meeting of the Fed and the ECB on monetary policy, to the speeches of the heads of the US Federal Reserve Bank and its head J. Powell, as well as the ECB President M. Draghi.
Market participants are expected to clear up the position of the regulator regarding the prospect of a decrease in interest rates this year from the Fed protocol. Recall that earlier in the winter, the head of the Central Bank, J. Powell, as well as his colleagues, made it clear several times that they had taken a wait-and-see attitude towards further actions by the bank on monetary policy. Signals about the deceleration of the national economy forced investors to think that the Fed might have to lower interest rates instead of their promised increase at the December meeting at the end of 2018, which stimulated the growth in demand for risky assets and put downward pressure on the dollar.
But following the May meeting, Powell's rhetoric has somewhat changed. He was more optimistic and economic statistics showed some improvement in core indicators, which forced markets to begin to doubt that rates could be lowered. Now, market participants will want to see in the published protocol, as well as in the speech of the head of the bank, either to confirm the probability of reducing the cost of borrowing or not, which, in our opinion, can have a noticeable effect on the US dollar rate.
As for the content of the minutes of the last meeting of the ECB, as well as the essence of the speech of its president M. Draghi, we expect the bank and the president to confirm their view of the need to continue the current monetary policy, which remains extremely "soft" and puts pressure on the dynamics of the single European currency. Taking this into account, we believe that the main currency pair may continue to gradually decrease, which may increase as a result of Powell's speech. If he again doesn't say anything about a likely decrease in interest rates, but on the contrary will say that there is a risk of a return to inflation. In fact, in this case, this will be confirmed by the expectant position of the regulator, which can end up as a maximum by raising interest rates by the end of this year or at least maintaining their current level.
Forecast of the day:
The EUR/USD pair is trading below 1.1155. Fixing below this mark will allow the pair to continue to decline to 1.1125 and then probably to 1.1100.
The GBP/USD pair is trading lower against the backdrop of a political crisis in Britain due to the uncertainty of the Brexit result and maintaining this negative will put pressure on the pair. Hence, we expect the resumption of its fall to 1.2700, and then to 1.2675.
