© Michael Sneyd
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There has been a boost to sentiment towards the Euro over the past couple of weeks from a potential action of the ECB. In terms of short-term trading, there is a bit of a wait-and-see moment ahead of Ben Bernanke's speech at Jackson Hole at the end of the month. There has been a choppy range trading and hitting of stops and particularly key technical support levels. That is why we have seen a kind of bounce on Friday within technical channel that EUR/USD currently trading in. Yesterday we saw a bit of a squeeze in some short Euro positioning. For the moment we see the Euro has been driven by where positioning currently stands, as well as liquidity and breaking of key technical levels.
What is your outlook for EUR/USD for the end of August and for the end of the year? What will be the main drivers?
We have a long EUR/USD trade recommendation. We are targeting 1.28 over the next one to two months. Main drivers for this on the U.S. Dollar side are expectations of further QE and Bernanke's speech in Jackson Hole, which will be the key event, where we expect he will give us a strong indication that the Fed is ready to do more. Our economists expect QE3 to be announced at the FOMC meeting in September. We think much like previous rounds of QE in the US, this will continue to weaken the U.S. Dollar.
On the Euro side we expect the ECB to say that they would provide support to markets, particularly to the Spanish government. We view that as very positive and we think that risk premium on the Euro should continue to decline with plenty of short Euro positions held out by investors at the moment to be closed out. This also is expected to provide a boost to the Euro.
In terms of targets, we are looking for 1.28 over the next 1-2 months and 1.30 by the end of the year.