Forex Forecast and Cryptocurrencies Forecast for June 08-12, 2020
First, a review of last week’s events:
- EUR/USD. Beginning May 25, the euro paired with the dollar rose in price for nine consecutive afternoon sessions, which, according to Dow Jones estimates, was the longest period of continuous growth since April 2011.
The ECB's decisions allowed the European currency to soar to its highest level since March 20, reaching the height of 1.1385. Led by Christine Lagarde, the Central Bank has surpassed all market expectations by increasing the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program (PEPP) by €600 billion to €1.350 trillion. This program will last at least until June 2021, and the proceeds received from the acquired bonds will participate in the process of reinvestment until the end of 2022. The ECB also kept the benchmark interest rate on loans at zero and the deposit rate at minus 0.5%. Thus, the ECB proved to be the only major regulator to continue the policy of quantitative easing (QE) last week, as well as one of the few central banks to undertake similar moves in June.
According to Christine Lagarde, the QE emergency program should solve two problems at once: to help the Eurozone economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and act as a pillar to overcome market stress.
The euro zone economic reports published this week also played in favor of the euro, they turned out to be optimistic for the most part, and business activity indicators were revised upwards.
As for the dollar, it began to sink, in part due to the growing appetite for risky assets. And if it was not supported by statistics from the US labor market, the pair would have every chance to paint the tenth daily candle green. However, the unemployment rate fell to 13.3% in May against 14.7% in April, and the number of new jobs outside the agricultural sector (NFP) rose, amounting to +2.509K against a reduction of almost 21 million (-20.678K) a month earlier.
As a result, the EUR/USD pair finally finished the last day of the working week in the red zone, having stopped at the level of 1.1290;
- GBP/USD. The British pound follows the euro for the third week in a row. One difference is that the Friday candle of June 05 also turned green on its chart. Starting at 1.2075 on May 18, the pair first breached the lower boundary of the channel 1.2165-1.2650, turning it from resistance to support, then reached its upper limit, and made another jerk to the north on June 05, taking the height of 1.2730 and thus adding 655 points in three weeks. Another correction then followed, and the pair put the final chord at 1.2665;
- USD/JPY. After a relatively quiet, by the standards of this pair, three weeks, against the background of the escalation of the us-Chinese conflict, it sharply went up in the past five days.
Relations between the two countries deteriorated after China approved national security laws in Hong Kong and Macau last month. The last step was Beijing’s decision to ban the United Airlines and Delta Air Lines from resuming flights to China, in response to which Washington, starting June 16, suspended Chinese flights to the United States.
And, in contrast to the euro and the pound, in relation to which the dollar was losing its position, it gained 180 points against the yen in five days. The maximum range of the pair’s fluctuations was 245 points, and on Friday June 5, it almost reached the symbolic height of 110.00. But it could not take it, and the pair ended the trading session at 109.60;
– cryptocurrencies. First, about crime. The report of the analytical company CipherTrace, according to which the total amount of stolen crypto assets reached $ 1.36 billion for the five months of 2020, turned out to be informative. At the same time, CipherTrace found that the first place in obtaining dirty bitcoins is taken by ... Finland. 12% of bitcoins entering this small, calm, northern European country are of illegal origin. The second place is taken by Russia, 5.23%, followed by English exchanges, whose indicator is 0.69%. The share of illegally obtained cryptocurrencies on German, Japanese and American exchanges is less than 0.1%.
Now about the highlights of the past period. At first, the crypto community was stirred up by the news about the transfer of $94 billion in 94,504 BTC. Immediately, a debate unfolded on the subject of the movement of such an impressive number of bitcoins. Most analysts linked this event to the imminent launch of bitcoin futures on the Bakkt platform. However, some believe that the transaction was made during the configuration and debugging of Bakkt systems.
The most important event of the week was the bitcoin breakthrough of the $10,000 horizon. On the night of Tuesday, June 2, the price of the main cryptocurrency reached $10,400, the highest since mid-February. However, the happiness of the bulls was short-lived: the leap up was not a steady trend, but short-term whale speculation. After 14 hours, at the opening of the American session, bitcoin flew down, falling below $9,500 in a few minutes and touching even the $9,130 mark at a certain point. Just one BitMEX exchange recorded the elimination of positions for $150 million in a matter of minutes. Some observers have noticed that at that moment the so-called Bart Simpson pattern formed on the BTC/USD chart.
Then, the price slowly rose to the zone of $9,500-9,850, where it remained until Friday evening, showing a 7-day increase of 3.35%
The chart of the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is very reminiscent of the BTC/USD chart with the same Simpson pattern on June 02, when the capitalization rose to $285 billion and then collapsed by 6%. At the time of writing, the indicator is at around $ 275 billion, which is 3.8% higher than its value seven days ago. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index is still in the middle of the neutral zone: if on May 29 its value was 48, it is 53 out of 100 possible on June 05.
Most of the major altcoins in general followed the BTC/USD pair. But if Ripple (XRP/USD) showed a growth similar to bitcoin - 3.24%, Litecoin and Ethereum significantly outperformed the reference cryptocurrency: LTC/USD - +6.6%, ETH/USD - +10.9%.
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