Forex news from the European morning session 25 Feb

News:

  • Oil ministers from OPEC and Non-OPEC are planning to meet in March - Russian oil minister
  • BOJ's Kiuchi says it's inconsistent to have negative interest rates and bond buying programme
  • BOJ's Kuroda says QQE with negative interest rates are having intended effects on economy
  • Kuroda: Doesn't see a limit in QQE
  • Flows into yen could impact the economy says Japan's Ishihara
  • PBOC say China's imports of crude oil will rise
  • Stournaras expects a "slight recovery" in Greek economy in H2
  • HSBC are lining up the Brexit ducks
  • Option expiries 10am NY cut today 25 Feb
  • Chinese equity markets close down 6% Feb 25
  • Nikkei 225 closes up + 1.41% at 16,140.34

Data:

  • Q4 2015 UK GDP 2nd release 0.5% vs 0.5% exp q/q
  • January 2016 Eurozone CPI inflation final 0.3% vs 0.4 exp y/y
  • Germany Jan HICP final mm -1.0% vs -1.0% flash
  • Spain Q4 GDP final qq +0.8% vs +0.8% flash
  • Eurozone M3 money supply Jan yy +5.0% vs +4.7% exp
  • Switzerland Q4 industrial output yy WDA -4.5% vs -2.7% prev
  • Germany GFK consumer confidence March 9.5 vs 9.3 exp
  • Switzerland HICP Jan mm -0.7% vs -0.5% exp
  • December 2015 Italian retail sales -0.1% vs +0.1% exp m/m
  • Italy consumer confidence index Feb 114.50 vs 118.0 exp

A session without any real trend but that's not stopped traders from being presented with a few opportunities.

Japanese equity gains had seen a rally in USDJPY and yen pairs generally with rises to 112.62 and 124.20 before seeing reversals as Nikkei pared gains into the close then European equities turned negative after firmer openings.

Cue moves on 112.00 and 123.50 only to run into good support and then nudging higher again before starting to ramp a little faster as I type this summary.

Euro found demand on the equity wobble which saw EURUSD up to 1.1035 after holding 1.1000 and EURGBP 0.7928. The latter pair capped there as the pound enjoyed some decent buying ahead of the GDP data which saw GBPUSD up to 1.3963 and EURGBP down to 0.7893.

After the data release we saw cable test good demand at 1.3900 and then nudged higher again before accelerating to fresh session highs.

EURCHF and USDCHF have enjoyed some decent demand into the dips as we'd expect with the SNB never far away from being in the frame.

USDCAD has fallen to 1.3645 on firmer oil after that had its own wobble early on while AUDUSD has enjoyed the commodity rally and had another look at 0.7200 after finding support below 0.7170.

Lots going on still but no one really any the wiser.