The decline of the GBP/USD paused on Monday, as the currency exchange rate traded sideways.
Although, the decline was expected to continue in the near future.
The Federal Reserve released last Wednesday the US FOMC Meeting Minutes where fed officials provide in-depth insights into the economic and financial conditions that influenced their vote on where to set interest rates.
"Almost all participants thought that it would be desirable to announce before too long a plan to stop reducing the Federal Reserve's asset holdings later this year. Such an announcement would provide more certainty about the process for completing the normalization of the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet," the document said.
US data on Friday will impact the GBP/USD
This week is set to be the first one of the month. Due to that reason it is set to have important data releases occurring.
The notable data releases that Dukascopy Analytics will cover will start on Wednesday. At 13:30 GMT the Canadian Trade Balance will be published and cause a notable move on all CAD pairs.
Moreover, at 15:00 GMT the Bank of Canada will publish their Overnight Rate, which has on average caused moves around 80 base points on the USD/CAD.
On Thursday, all attention will be on the European Central Bank. The bank will publish its Main Refinancing Rate at 12:45 GMT and host a press conference at 13:30 GMT.
The rate announcement has become insignificant, as the ECB keeps their rate at 0.00%. Instead during the press conference the heads of the bank will reveal information about the ECB's asset buying program.
On Friday, Canada and the US will publish their monthly employment data sets. It has five important data sets impacting the USD/CAD. It is the most complicated one to work with, as each data set impacts the rate differently.
For more information watch the weekly calendar analysis stream on our YouTube channel.
GBP/USD short term review
The GBP/USD started the week by opening higher. Although, by the middle of the day's trading the rate had not moved, as it traded sideways just below the 1.3250 level.Meanwhile, the rate had been approached by the resistance of the 55-hour simple moving average. In addition, the 100-hour SMA had also begun to provide technical resistance to the rate.
In general, the resistance levels might push the rate down into the weekly PP at 1.3204. On the other hand, if they fail, the rate would push up to the 1.3350 mark.
Hourly Chart
On the daily chart the recent moves have been consistent with a dominant ascending pattern that was drawn by our analyst last Wednesday.
Although, take into account that, as the Brexit deadline approaches, all patterns are expected to be less and less relative.
Daily chart
Meanwhile, the pending orders were no longer neutral. 58% of pending commands in the 100-pip range were set to buy the GBP/USD.
In general, traders continue to ride the wave downwards. However, they are prepared to close their short positions, as buy orders dominated the pending orders. Namely, those are likely close short position buy orders.