Japanese Unemployment Rate, Turkish Capacity Utilisation, COT Report
The U.S. dollar traded relatively stable against other major currencies as seen in the performance of the USDX, while in emerging markets up to Friday the negative trend for the dollar compared to emerging market currencies in pairs like the USD/ZAR and USD/INR continued.
Major stock market indices in the U.S. were once again quite bullish during the last trading day of the week, while the Volatility Index VIX traded almost unchanged compared to the previous day. After markets reopened on Monday indices traded overall quite stable with minor losses seen in markets like Germany 40, US 500 and US 30.
In terms of fundamental data releases this week between Christmas and New Year is set to be fairly quiet period with mostly only the usual weekly data releases like oil stockpiles change data and weekly jobless claims due besides some rather few monthly statistics like housing market data from the U.S. which will be published on Tuesday and Wednesday and Japanese unemployment rate statistics due on Tuesday.
Gold
Gold prices continued to rise gradually over the past trading days around the Christmas Holidays with an upside seen unrelated to the strength or weakness of the dollar as the price of gold also moved up for example in the Gold (EUR) CFD contract again touching on the €1,600-level. While silver and platinum prices were also up in the second half of last week, by Monday morning these precious metals retraced lower.
Due to the Christmas Holidays, the weekly Commitment of Traders (COT) report by the U.S. CFTC is only released on Monday and not as usual on Friday. These reports among other numbers contain also the net speculative positions in futures markets on underlying like gold, silver and copper.
WTI Oil
As oil prices continued to climb on Thursday, following the also positive trend in the equity markets, WTI crude oil closed the week at a new four weeks high. Factors supporting the rise of oil prices were the diminishing crude oil stockpiles in the U.S. as well as issues of Libyan producers to export oil. For now the reports of many thousands of flights cancelled in many regions and some countries considering adding even more restrictions given the high number of new COVID cases did not seem enough to significantly alter the upwards trajectory of oil prices, while compared to the gains of last week only a minor retracement was seen by Monday morning. South Africa, which is considered by many the origin country of the Omicron variant meanwhile further loosened COVID restrictions, making self-isolation of contacts people had with COVID-positive patients only mandatory if the contacts themselves experience symptoms of the illness.
This week as usual the American Petroleum Institute (API) publishes weekly crude oil, gasoline and distillate stockpile estimates on Tuesday, followed by similar numbers from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday.
USD/TRY
The Turkish lira was trading on Friday stronger for the fifth day in a row, while the USD/TRY pair fell on a weekly basis by unprecedented 34% following measures announced at the beginning of the week. Reuters reported that especially state banks participated last week in selling foreign currencies, which could have boosted the lira’s strength. While the schemes announced by the government to guarantee rates to some domestic market participants clearly worked in stabilising the currency, it remains to be seen if the rates will remain stable and if not how many options remain for future crisis given the further depleted foreign currency reserves by the Turkish central bank and other local banks.
On Monday Turkish capacity utilisation data can be expected, while on Friday the trade balance statistic and services producer price index for November will be released.
