- It has been a relatively quiet start to the week, with stock markets mixed and subdued, and the US Dollar leading the Asian session with minor gains. The greenback has been boosted by rising US treasury yields as traders seem to expect relatively elevated US interest rates over the near term, with increased expectations that the Fed will hike rates again at its next meeting in May.
- In the Forex market, the US Dollar has risen today against its long-term bearish trend but looks like it may be topping out, so trend traders may be watching for a new short trade if confirmed by the first couple of hours of the London session, probably looking to be long of the EUR/USD or GBP/USD currency pairs, both of which are in confirmed long-term bullish trends. Over today’s Asian session, the Canadian Dollar looked like the strongest major currency, while the Japanese Yen was the weakest.
- Several soft commodities are performing well, with the Sugar ETF CANE and the Cocoa ETN NIB reaching a new multi-year high closing price last week.
- Today will see a release of the US Empire State Manufacturing Index.
- Friday’s release of US Retail Sales data came in much worse than had been expected, showing a month-on-month drop of 1.0% compared to the widely expected drop by 0.4%.