Euro Traders Stay Focused On Tomorrow’s Central Bank Meetings

By Benjamin Spier,

European currency traders seem relatively frozen in place ahead of the European Central Bank and Bank of England monetary policy meetings that are set to take place tomorrow. The Euro and Sterling both sold off 0.20% against the US Dollar in today’s session, which wasn’t enough to bring EURUSD out of its 2-day, 50-pip trading range. Although Cable slid to a new low for the week at 1.5629, it wasn’t clear what caused the simultaneous drop with the Euro, as there were no significant headlines at the time.

Later, UK and Euro-zone Service PMI’s continued to indicate further slowdown in both economies , although the composite EC PMI beat expectations . On the other hand, Euro- z one retail sales grew during May and beat expectations for stagnant sales (of note: sales were revised lower in April and were markedly lower on a yearly-basis). Economists’ projections for monetary action from both central banks in tomorrow’s meetings were supported by the most recent round of bleak economic releases.

There are no data releases scheduled for the North American session and expectations for volatility are low as US equity markets are closed for Independence Day.

GBDUSD 5-minute: July 4, 2012

--- Written by Benjamin Spier, DailyFX Research

Original Article: http://www.dailyfx.com/forex/market_alert/2012/07/04/Euro_Traders_Stay_Focused_on_Tomorrows_Central_Bank_Meetings.html