Forex Signals Brief for May 21: Can US Jobs Improve?

US Market Wrap

The recovery in US equity markets continues to gather some steam as the S&P 500 made fresh two-month highs overnights.

The moves were spurred on by the tech sector continuing to lead the way, with the NASDAQ pushing higher as well. News that the US Government is going to make it hard for Chinese companies to stay listed on US exchanges did weight on markets, however, overall the news appeared to get shrugged off.

The Greenback was under pressure for most of the session and that helped prop up a number of the majors. However, the GBP/USD which was strong throughout the session, fell away on news the BOE would consider going to negative rates.

The Data Agenda

We’ve got a very busy session in Europe today as a host of PMI readings will likely dominate early trade and make for some stop-start price action.

The main release of note for the EUR/USD will be German Manufacturing PMI, which is expected to show a small improvement on the prior reading. We’ll also have the broader PMI manufacturing data from the Eurozone and some of the individual countries.

In the UK, it’s a similar story for the GBP/USD as we look towards Manufacturing and Services PMI – both of which will be on the soft side.

Later in the day, the attention is once again back on US jobless claims, which is predicted to show 2,400K new applications. The other worrying figure is the continuing claims which are coming in at 24,765K. While initial claims are falling by the week, the continuing claims numbers must be starting to weigh heavily.

Other US data points of note will be the Philly Fed and Existing Homes Sales, so across the board it is a very busy day of top-tier releases.

Forex Signal Update

The FX Leaders Team hit 4 straight winners with another one closing out in the green this morning, making for a very solid 24 hours.

Make sure you follow our live signals as we are looking to close the week on the front foot.

NZD/USD – Pending Signal

The NZD/USD is doing its best to try and break to the upside and as you can see it is sitting right under key resistance. We are looking for a long signal here on a break of that resistance.

Gold – Pending Signal

The GOLD trade continues to be a bullish one and price is slowly recovering from the sharp selling early in the week. We continue to hunt for a long signal.

Cryptocurrency Update

Although BTC continues to hold under the $10,000 level, there was some action yesterday.

The sudden sell-off, which sent the wider cryptocurrency market lower and pushed Bitcoin under the $9,500 level, was caused by a whale transferring 50 coins that were mined a decade ago.

That in and of itself is interesting as this is the kind of thing we’ve been seeing at this level continually with big traders liquidating positions.

That said, price did rebound so we are really at an inflection point at the moment.