North American Summary and Highlights 15 July

North American session

The USD saw a brief dip as Fed’s Powell stated that recent data gave greater confidence that inflation was falling though he declined to give a signal for any particular meeting and the USD ended marginally firmer.EUR/USD slipped to touch marginally below 1.09 while GBP/USD found sellers below 1.30. USD/JPY was stable near 158 apart from a brief dip on Powell’s comments. The commodity currencies saw some slippage as early equity gains faded, but came off their lows as equities stablized.

Early in the session Fed’s Goolsbee suggested softer inflation data was bringing rate cuts closer, while the Empire State manufacturing survey was marginally weaker at -6.6 from -6.0. The Bank of Canada’s Q2 business outlook survey was a little softer, but not changed much from its Q1 findings. Late in the session Trump chose populist Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate.

European morning session

The USD fell back through the European morning after making some gain in Asia, following the Trump assassination attempt and somewhat disappointing Chinese data. The EUR was the best performer with EUR/USD gaining 25 pips to 1.0915, while AUD and GBP gained only marginally, and USD/JPY was little changed near 158. USD/CHF fell 15 pips to 0.8940, but the USD was little changed against the scandis. 

The only data in the session was Eurozone industrial production, which fell a little less than expected but was still weak at -0.6% m/m, -2.9% y/y in May.