USD

June’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting minutes are released later today. Investors will be waiting eagerly for any clues on whether the Federal Reserve might cut its bond buying programme.

The bank’s members discussed tapering in their 15th and 16th June policy meeting and since then most policy makers have been broadly bullish on the US recovery. The main reasons being recent job growth and above target inflation.

Last Friday’s non-farm pay rolls showed the US added 850,000 jobs after two months of weaker gains. Today’s minutes should shed more light on how close Fed officials thought the central bank was to achieving its goals, even before the latest economic data. It may also reveal which officials see recent high inflation readings as temporary and who sees it as more long term.

Investors are also hoping to gain some insight into the initial discussions around scaling back monthly purchases of $80 billion in Treasury bonds and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

Yesterday, the release of the ISM survey’s measure of service employment showed a fall of 49.3 in June from 55.3 in May.

EUR

Weak data out of Europe plunged the euro towards a three-month low against the dollar this morning, down 0.37%. Investor sentiment in Germany, the eurozone’s biggest economy, remains high but fell sharply in July, the ZEW economic research institute reported. Orders for German-made goods posted their sharpest slump in May since the first lockdown in 2020.

GBP

The pound was down 0.34% against the dollar this morning. This is after hitting a one-week high as the market looked forward to UK lockdown restrictions all but ending in two weeks’ time.

Key announcements 

19:00 – USD – Federal Open Market Committee  minutes-7pm