The EUR/USD rose on Tuesday, benefiting from the continued easing in the markets relative to the U.S. dollar. The pair returned to recent highs after the week began with a small retracement of recent gains, although a new round of risk-on sentiment in the market pushed bids back to those levels. Despite this, EUR/USD continues to be trapped below 1.1200 as Eurozone bulls struggle to instill confidence in the Fib hike.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell appears to have confirmed that the U.S. central bank will begin a rate-cutting cycle on September 18 during his speech last Friday at the Jackson Hole Symposium, causing market appetite to soar again.
On the euro side, the economic agenda is filled with relatively unimportant news, and Wednesday is shaping up to be a quiet session in both Europe and the United States. Investors will be watching for a speech by Christopher Waller, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, in the early hours of the U.S. session, while central bank watchers are also looking for headlines from the European Union’s Eurogroup meeting scheduled during the European session.
The European Union’s Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices inflation figures for August will be released early Friday, and Eurozone price growth is expected to fall to 2.8% year-over-year from 2.9%, as inflation pressures continue to ease, although not as quickly as European Central Bank policymakers had hoped.
Also on Thursday, U.S. gross domestic product figures for the second quarter will be released, expected to remain unchanged at 2.8% year-over-year. However, the key data of the week is the Personal Consumption Price Index for July, which is expected to rise from 2.6% year-over-year to 2.7% year-over-year and remain unchanged at 0.2% month-over-month. Market participants, motivated by hopes for rate cuts, believe that the inflation data will come in below estimates, while an above-estimated figure could create nervousness in investors’ risk appetite.
EUR/USD Daily Technical Analysis for August 28th
The EUR/USD is on track for its best monthly performance since November 2022, up more than 3.1% in the month of August alone. Despite the early pullback due to technical exhaustion this week, the Fib has managed to gain ground for four straight trading weeks and is pushing above the 200-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at 1.0832.
Unlike a healthy bid into bullish territory, the Fib is very vulnerable to a bearish pullback, and the absence of upside momentum could see prices pull back to the 50-day EMA at 1.0925.
