The Sterling showed mixed performance on Monday. While the currency gained against the riskier currencies (0.52% against the New Zealand Dollar and 0.16% against the Australian Dollar), it also gave up 0.60 and 0.56% relative to the safe havens, namely the Japanese Yen and US Dollar, respectively, even though the calendar was empty.
The only major commodity to appreciate on Monday was corn, which added slightly more than one percent. Higher US Dollar is weighing on the majority of Greenback-dependent commodities, while fundamentals are fuelling a decline even more.
New Zealand Dollar tumbled across the board on Monday by falling versus the Greenback and the Euro. Expectations are growing that the Federal Reserve is going to raise interest rates ultimately by the end of this year and at least once.
Despite a relatively strong reading of the US Import Price Index, the American currency sustained losses against most major currencies on Friday and over the weekend.
Investor sentiment improved on Friday and caused the British currency to strengthen against most major peers.
Energy prices spent the last day of the previous week in a confident uptrend, given largely optimistic US stockpiles' reports and on the back of analysts' views the turbulence in global markets has practically come to an end.
The Euro eased from peaks it had reached back on March 10 when the ECB President Mario Draghi said the central bank seems to be done with interest rate decreases for now.
The Sterling had another day of relatively good performance, with exception against the Swissie and the Euro.
This time the US Dollar's performance was not formidable as before, with the Buck declining against most major peers on Thursday.
Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank's president, made an announcement that the regulator is unlikely to cut interest rates further in the nearest future, albeit not completely ruling out such a possibility.
Decisions taken by the European Central Bank on Thursday have probably confused nobody but traders in the FX market.
The US Dollar's performance on Wednesday was quite similar to the Sterling's.
The UK Manufacturing and Industrial Production data had a mild effect on the British currency, with the Sterling crosses mostly inching a few pips higher.
Oil prices have erased all Tuesday losses and rallied by almost 5% for the American-made Crude and by 3.58% for the European-traded Brent.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand made an unexpected decision to cut the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 2.25% at its meeting yesterday.
On Tuesday the US Dollar managed to outperform most major currencies, with exception against the Japanese Yen.
With another relatively quiet day, the British currency did not experience significant gains or losses.
Traders have used the opportunity to reconsider their bullish stance on oil prices in the wake of the recent agreement between Russia and OPEC countries on the matter of production freeze at January levels. Oil took a leg down and posted a daily decrease of 2.9-3.7% depending on the origin.
The Euro was considerably down only against its Japanese peer on Tuesday, as EUR/JPY dropped by 0.75% and was driven by safe-haven needs on the back of sluggish trade balance data from China.
The Sterling started the week with relatively good performance against most of other major currencies.
With another day of disappointing data and Friday's wage figures continuing to weigh on the US currency, losses were seen all over the market.
While on Friday there was one commodity (gold), which registered a loss in prices, on Monday every single component from our daily review managed to fix a green candle.
The Euro's best-performing currency pair was the one against the Kiwi on Monday, as it added 0.32%. Manufacturing sales in New Zealand dropped in the last quarter of 2015 after an advance that had been booked a quarter before.
In spite of a strong reading of the US NFP data, the Greenback declined against most major peers, with exception against the Swissie and the Yen.