Weekly data: Action on the US Dollar and Oil ahead of US NFP release

This article was submitted by Antreas Themistokleous, market analyst at Exness.


The trends from last week have generally rebounded in a bullish momentum in the new week so far, with many cyclical instruments slowly moving to the upside just before this week’s economic news releases with oil being the exception to this rule since the price has been underperforming for the last 3 weeks. This preview of weekly data looks at EURUSD and UKOIL ahead of the critical release on Friday of the US non farm payrolls report.

The main events in last week was the FOMC minutes which offered a minor support on the US Dollar before resuming its downward movement. Europe’s top economy ,Germany released the Ifo Business climate which rose to 86.3 in November 2022 against the previous 84.5 points in October. This had somewhat supported the Euro against its pairs at least in the short term. In the US the building permits figure decreased by almost 50,000 and initial jobless claims rose by  17,000 signaling the US economy is slightly underperforming and created some losses for the greenback.

This week on the economic calendar the publications coming out like the US Job openings , the FED chair Jerome Powell’s  speech, EU unemployment rate, US unemployment rate and the most important news release – the NFP on Friday December 2nd at 13:30 GMT are expected to keep the volatility in elevated levels. Most USD related pairs are expected to be quite volatile especially around the time of the NFP.

EURUSD, daily chart

With the Dollar underperforming for the last 3 weeks we see the pairs traded against it to make continuous profits. The 30 – year treasury yields are declining further pushing on the US Dollar value. While in an overall bullish movement for the last month the price corrected to the downside for 5 sessions before resuming the upward momentum.

From the technical analysis perspective the price is currently trading around the $1.04800 price area above the 23.6% of the fibonacci retracement level. The US NFP release  is expected to affect the fiber chart with the market expecting a decreased , yet positive, figure.  This publication will most probably create volatility and might possibly give the bears some boost to push the price to the downside since the consensus is in favor of the US Dollar. If this is the case the first point of support might be the $1.02600 price area which consists of the 23.6% of the Fibonacci and also the inside support since mid August 2022. A second point of support might be the $1.01200 price area which falls around the 38.2% of the Fibonacci and also an inside support since mid September.

A continuation to the upside would probably face some resistance around the $1.0600 area which consists of an inside support since early July 2022 but with the Stochastic indicator in the overbought levels this scenario seems to be the least possible.

UKOIL, daily chart

The next couple of weeks are extremely important for the price of oil since on December 1st we will have the US lay the sales tranche on the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserves), on December 4th there will be the OPEC meeting and on December 5th EU sanctions on oil will kick in. We are entering this pre-announcements period of this week so we might see some consolidation in the price because of the anticipation of these events by the market.

On the technical point of view the price has been trading exactly on the lower band of the Bollinger bands indicating great volatility in the market. After the break below the bearish weekly trendline and the 50 day moving average the price found resistance on the daily trendline without being able to break below it at least for the time that this report is written.

If the price finds adequate support on the Bollinger bands and the daily trendline it might correct to the upside with the first point of resistance being around the $ 91.5 price area which is just above the 23.6% of the Fibonacci retracement level and also around the 50 day moving average. This movement is further supported by the oversold level on the Stochastic indicator.

In the event that the price continues to move down we might expect some support around the $76 price area which consists of an inside support area since mid December 2021 but this might be an extreme example of support since the price is already very low compared to the years average price of around $1oo.


Disclaimer: opinions are personal to the author and do not reflect the opinions of Exness or LeapRate.

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