USD strengthens into month-end – Scotiabank

The US Dollar (USD) is entering Friday’s NA session with modest gains against most of the G10 currencies, supported by month end flows and a broader tone that appears somewhat fragile as market participants react to the CME’s outage, Scotiabank's Chief FX Strategists Shaun Osborne and Eric Theoret report.

Market tone is impacted by CME outage

Trading has been halted as a result of a data center malfunction, and most of the futures markets remain closed. The outage is impacting liquidity within the context of a holiday-thinned market and volumes are said to be running between 60-70% of their regular averages. Most of the G10 currencies are softening within their recent ranges, fading a slight portion of their weekly gains. EUR and NZD are relative underperformers and down about 0.4% vs. the USD while the CHF, GBP, and AUD are seeing modest declines. The CAD is performing relatively well and down only 0.1% while the JPY is flat."

"The broader tone is mixed as global equity indices offer little in terms of movement while government bond markets hint to mild risk aversion with slightly lower yields across most of Europe. The CME outage has halted trade in all commodity markets (oil, copper, gold), along with Treasury futures and US equities. Focus remains squarely centered on the Fed as market participants assess the likelihood of a December cut, currently priced at 20bpts. Next week’s US release calendar includes the ISM manufacturing on Monday, and an ADP employment release on Wednesday, along with industrial production and the ISM services print."

"Next week’s highlight will be the PCE inflation release scheduled for Friday, and will be followed by the University of Michigan’s sentiment figures (preliminary). There are no Fed speakers scheduled next week as we are entering the communications blackout period ahead of the December 10 decision. The overall tone of recent communication from Fed policymakers has generally leaned dovish however we remain concerned about the risk of dissent, given the divergence of voting at the last FOMC."