The recent development of trade tariffs has shocked the markets in the last few days, initially being pushed on Canada, Mexico and China. The most recent developments is including the Euro zone, with Trump mentioning that trade tariffs will be implemented there too. We did see fluctuations to the EUR during Monday, with GBP/EUR taking advantages breaking above the 1.20-mark and shown resilience holding that level moving into Tuesday. While EUR/USD saw big swings on the initial news, the market has rebound back into the 1.03-region.
The news regarding trade tariffs is far from over and will continue. This is causing major swings to USD-pairs, making it very vital for anyone have exposure to transfer into USD or sell off USD into other currencies to make sure the timing is correct. Noticing swings from high and lows in the day of 1%.
Moving into today’s data, it’s US heavy in the afternoon. First, we can see American factory for month-on-month being released. We saw a decrease from December’s figures compared to January, and this movement is expected to continue. February is forecasted to slow down in factory orders to -0.8% versus -0.4%. A combination of a strong dollar and anticipation of Trump’s movement on tariffs has held off orders – to see what the movement will look like.
US will also release JOLT job openings, referring to all positions that are not fulfilled on the last day of the month. Previous figures showed a total of 8.098m by the end of December. Figures are expected to come out slightly lower for January at 8m.
GBP/EUR 1.2002 GBP/USD 1.2412 GBP/AED 4.5648
GBP/AUD 2.0010 GBP/CHF 1.1285 GBP/CAD 1.7929
GBP/NZD 2.2144 EUR/USD 1.0332 GBP/ZAR 23.2913