EUR/USD Rally - Who Wants Euro to Go Up Against USD?

by Vahid | Forex Market Analysis and Signals | Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Excessive Euro appreciation against USD has made the economy ministers of European Union so worried and angry, specially in 16 European countries that Euro is their currency. Since March 2009, Euro value is increased up to 20% against USD. EUR/USD rate is now 1.4718 whereas when Euro became accepted as the currency of 16 European countries at the beginning of 2000, EUR/USD rate was 0.8200.

USA wants USD to become weaker or stays week by keeping the interest rates low. Currently the interest rate in USA is 0.25 - which is almost zero. This means more orders to American factories, more jobs, more production and economic improvement. But at the same time this is what Europe doesn’t like. A weak USD against Euro means transferring and investing more Euro to USA. It means lower tendency to buy European products by the Americans and higher tendency to buy American products by Europeans. It also means less tourists from America and many other countries to Europe and more tourists from Europe to America and so more investing and spending in America. This is what Canada is also suffering from and you will see its effects on Canada’s Employment Change which is predicted to be much lower than the previous month (it will be released on Nov 06 at 08:00am EST).

This is the USA treasury policy to help US economy grow after the economic recession. However, as the economic recession has come to an end, Europe requested USA and China to increase their currencies values, because they believe there is no point to keep them low anymore. At the same time, having a stronger Euro has an advantage for European countries. Buying crude oil and its derivatives will be easier for them.

Unfair EUR/USD rate has another reason. The extremely low USD interest rate makes big investors to borrow billions of dollars from the American banks, change it to Euro and deposit it in Europeans banks to enjoy the Euro high interest rate. At the same time they also use this money to buy the shares of some European companies that are recovering from the recession very fast and are getting back to the level that they were before the economic recession.

On the other hand, European economic growth rate is very slow. Unemployment rate reached 7.9% which is the highest in the past 10 years. European economic growth rate decreased over 8.4% by the end of June 2009. Economists believe that Europe economic growth will become positive by the end of 2009. However, BASF which is the biggest European chemical company alerted that there are still a lot of negative factors threatening Europe economy. Volkswagen the biggest automobile producing company in Europe announced that their third-quarter net profit tumbled 86%. World economy will have a slow growth rate during 2010 too. Europe and America will be faced with two big challenges: increasing unemployment rate and governments debts.

What do all these mean? Will EUR/USD go down or it will keep on going up?

Lets see what the price charts say. We are at the first hours of the new monthly candlestick. Last month candlestick (October) went up strongly but obviously it was stopped by the broken support line which is working as a resistance now. On the other hand, it seems 61.80% Fibonacci level is working as a strong support line. The strong bullish movement we had since December 2008 can not be stopped easily. EUR/USD will stay below the broken support line and 61.80% level, trying to scratch these two resistance/support lines. It can still keep on going up below the broken support line.

EUR/USD Monthly Chart 01 November 2009

Although the last weekly candlestick has formed a strong sell signal, we should not expect to see a strong bearish movement so easily. Obviously the 61.80% Fibonacci level will resist and will not let the price go down easily. On the other hand, the Bollinger Middle Band is about 300 pips below the current price and even if EUR/USD can break below the 61.80% level, it will have to fight the Bollinger Middle Band which will work as a strong support line.

EUR/USD Weekly Chart 01 November 2009

What about GBP/USD?

GBP/USD has almost the same situation as EUR/USD. I expect to see more bullish pressure toward the Bollinger Middle Band on the monthly and so the weekly charts.

GBP/USD Monthly Chart 01 November 2009

GBP/USD will try to reach and test the 1.6716 resistance level.

GBP/USD Weekly Chart 01 November 2009

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17 Comments:
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Comment by King

2009-11-01 22:25:21

Hey vahid
you’re the king in analysing and interpreting the forex market. Outstanding job vahid, keep it up!
Kingsley