NFP Preview – Price Action Setups (8.3.2017)
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- In this webinar, we used price action to look at macro markets ahead of tomorrow’s NFP report, and after today’s Bank of England ‘Super Thursday’ batch of announcements.
- The first market we looked at was the U.S. Dollar via ‘DXY’. The move of weakness has continued after a brutal July for the Greenback. While this was very much along the lines of our Q3 forecast, the fact that the Dollar remains so exuberantly weak could be a daunting prospect for trend-followers. When the Dollar finally does see a pullback, how deep may it run? Rather than taking a direct stance on USD, traders can look to extrapolate continued USD-weakness in markets such as EUR/USD, AUD/USD, or NZD/USD. Given that we have a ‘big’ us market release on the calendar for tomorrow, this can open the door to such a possibility.
- EUR/USD: Too hot to handle for bullish continuation at the moment. A deeper pullback around NFP tomorrow could open the door to top-side continuation plays. We looked at a series of support levels that can be usable for such a purpose. IG Client Sentiment remains stretched here, with more than three traders short for every one long, as of this writing. Given retail sentiment’s traditional contrarian nature, this is bullish for the pair.
- GBP/USD: Down to Fibonacci support after a dovish BoE outlay. But within the BoE’s meeting minutes was a warning of rate hikes that markets are seemingly discounting, or ignoring altogether. As inflation has remained well-above the BoE’s 2% target, the very realistic possibility of rate hikes has started to get priced-in to the British Pound. Will bulls let Cable fall further? We looked at two possible support areas to follow on GBP/USD using recent price action dynamics.
- EUR/GBP: Broke above the .9000 level today, and this is rarified air for the pair as EUR/GBP struggled to hold above .9000 for a month after the British Pound flash crash, only to fall back down to support around .8300. But as Euro strength has become a primary theme for FX markets, this mornings burst of weakness in GBP drove the pair back above this level. If EUR/GBP finds its way back-below .9000, there could be an interesting fade setup. Conversely, if support settles in around .9000, a bullish continuation play could be in the cards.
- GBP/JPY: Legitimate reversal potential after the pair peeled-down from the confluent zone of resistance that runs from 147.75-148.45. A downside break of 144.00 would make the bearish theme look considerably more attractive.
- USD/JPY: Support at 109.90 deserves some attention, but the themes of Yen-weakness appear to be waning as the Yen has been unable to offset that burst of USD-weakness in July. We looked at how near-term price action can be used to substantiate bullish plays on the pair provided that prices stay > 109.90.
- AUD/USD: Pullback to support, significant resistance exists above the .80-handle, so plays should concentrate near-term targets at or below this area of resistance.
- NZD/USD: Still attractive topside play, and one of the more attractive setups for continuation of USD-weakness. A deeper pullback to the .7335 area could be very attractive for bullish continuation setups.
--- Written by James Stanley, Strategist for DailyFX.com
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