On Monday the USD/JPY traded sideways as it was being kept down by simple moving averages of the hourly chart.
If the rate manages to break the resistance of these simple moving averages, it will approach the next technical resistance. Namely, a 61.80% Fibonacci retracement level at 110.80 will get approached.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released Non-Farm Employment Change data better-than-expected of 304K compared to forecast 165K. Note, that the Average Hourly Earnings and the Unemployment Rate were released at the same time with the Non-Farm Employment Change.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday: "The labor force participation rate, at 63.2 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 60.7 percent, changed little over the month; both measures were up by 0.5 percentage point over the year."
FOMC Meeting Minutes week
This week will have various data releases in various countries that will influence many currency exchange rates. Although, the main event of the week will be the release of the Federal Open Markets Committee Meeting Minutes on Wednesday.The data releases will start on Tuesday. At 09:30 GMT the UK will publish their employment data. The Average Earnings index will have the biggest impact on the value of GBP.
On Wednesday, the already mentioned FOMC Meeting Minutes will be published at 19:00 GMT. They are expected to cause an impact on all USD pairs.
On Thursday, EUR traders will pay attention to the Markit released European Services and Manufacturing PMIs. The German release at 08:30 GMT is the most important.
Later on during the same day the US Durable Goods Orders and Core Durable Goods Orders will be published.
The week will end with the Canadian Core Retail Sales at 13:30 GMT on Friday.
All of these events are scheduled to be covered by Dukascopy Analytics on our Dukascopy Webinars YouTube channel. The streams start ten minutes before the data release.
For more information watch the weekly Calendar Analysis stream recording.
USD/JPY short term daily review
During the previous trading session, the currency exchange rate was trading sideways at the 110.00 level as it was predicted. On Monday morning, the rate was resisted by the 55-hour SMA at the 110.59 mark.In regards to the near-term future, it is expected that the 55-hour simple moving average will support the rate to help it to break the resistance level of the 100-hour SMA. In this case, the rate will surge to the 61.80% Fibo at 110.77.
On the other hand, the resistance levels of the 55-hour and the 100-hour SMAs could resist the rate to the weekly pivot point at 110.46.
Hourly Chart
On the daily chart, the long term target of the 111.00 has been reached. Namely, the pair reached above it and retraced back down to the 55-day SMA.In general, by looking at the daily chart it can be observed that the pair is expected to trade sideways, as it has ended an upwards aimed wave.
In addition, an ascending pattern has been discovered.
Daily chart
On Monday, the Swiss Foreign Exchange sentiment indicated that 56% of all the open position volume was short on the USD/JPY.
Meanwhile, in the 100-pip range around the pair trader set up pending orders were set to sell the pair in 56% of cases.
It can be concluded that traders have also spotted the end of the wave and have started to short the USD/JPY. Moreover, additional short positions would be opened by the pending sell orders.