investingLive European FX news wrap: markets steady, oil prices on the rise again

• How have interest rate expectations changed after this week’s events?
• Indian Rupee targeting new record lows as RBI’s interventions continue to fail
• No big surprises expected from the BOJ at next week’s meeting – Barclays
• Gold remains stuck in a tight consolidation as traders await new catalysts for next move
• Italy December final CPI +1.2% vs +1.2% y/y prelim
• Oil back in the spotlight as US-Iran showdown may not be over
• Japan finance minister Katayama continues with the verbal intervention on the yen currency
• BOJ finally set to commence selling of its ETF holdings
• What are the main events for today?
• Germany December final CPI +1.8% vs +1.8% y/y prelim
• FX option expiries for 16 January 10am New York cut
• Live Nasdaq Technical Analysis for Today
• Japanese yen remains in focus as we look towards the end of the week
• UK statistics office evaluates potential delay to its overhauled jobs survey – report

It’s been a fairly slow session with very limited economic data and newsflow. There were no real highlights with just the Japanese Finance Minister Katayama continuing with verbal intervention. The JPY spiked in the Asian session as Katayama threatened joint intervention with the US. Since then, it’s just been bouncing around the session highs.

In the markets, the most notable mover has been crude oil. Prices have been surging throughout the session in what looks like hedging into the weekend risk. Late yesterday, we got a report from Fox News saying that US air, land and sea military assets were moving to the Middle East and added that US military transit to the Middle East is expected to take a week.

Now, we might say that a lot can change in a week and that there’s still time before worrying about an escalation, but you never know what might happen over the weekend with Trump. The other notable movers have been US Treasury yields as the momentum since yesterday’s strong US jobless claims data persisted.

In the American session, we get Canadian Housing Starts, US Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, and the US NAHB Housing Market Index. All these indicators are rarely market-moving unless there are big deviations. We will also have some Fedspeak with Fed’s Bowman and Fed’s Jefferson being the main highlights, but it’s unlikely they will add anything new at this point.

This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.