Market News

This looks like being a fairly quiet week ahead, especially on Monday which is a public holiday in the USA, Japan and Canada. It should be a fairly quiet week for the Forex market, with scheduled data releases focusing mostly on the USD and GBP.

As a result of the Fed decision not to raise interest rates in September and with little confidence that it will do so by the end of this year, together with the rise in some industrial commodities the currency was down against most of the major and emerging market currencies for the second consecutive week.

The minutes of the September Federal Reserve meeting released on Thursday indicated that an interest rate hike was certainly justified at the time but policy makers decided that waiting for more evidence of a global economic slowdown was a wiser course of action.

As investors await the Federal Reserve Bank release of its latest protocol and minutes, the Dollar was pushed lower versus the Euro as traders ponder the possibility of a 2015 rate hike.

Oil prices seem to be edging up slowly. Despite the sudden increase in U.S. stockpiles, crude oil futures rose in early Asian trade on Thursday with additional trading from Chinese traders following a week long National Day holiday period.

The Bank of Japan’s optimistic outlook for the Japanese economy helped to push the Japanese Yen broadly higher.

Asian stocks zoomed up Wednesday hitting a seven-week high as oil prices boosted resource shares and emerging economy currencies.

The Aussie Dollar took the lead among the major currencies after the Reserve Bank of Australia left interest rates unchanged.

Monday saw market rallies across the globe with both the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average both closing up near 1.8 percent and European stocks recovering 3 percent.

The US Dollar had been broadly lower during European trading following Friday’s dismal labor report.

The Greek populace has landed Alexis Tsipras back in the Prime Minister’s office but things aren’t going to return to normal till the country has taken control of past debts that have placed it in jeopardy to begin with.

This is going to be a busy and important week, with crucial Central Bank data coming for the USD, the British Pound, the Japanese Yen and the Australian Dollar. Get the economic and political calendar for the week of October 5, 2015 here.

FXCM, a leading online provider of foreign exchange trading is back in the headlines again. It announced Thursday that it was the victim of a criminal cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to customer information.

The Euro came under pressure as expectations have grown that the European Central Bank may be compelled to enlarge its Quantitative Easing scheme.

Asian manufacturing reports released today show both China’s and Japan’s PMI’s coming in at lower numbers.