The balance of powers in the international currency market (also known as forex) influences many contemporary tendencies in the entire world. At the same time, traders and investors rely on accurate forex forecasts to earn money. That is why we keep on publishing those weekly consensus forecasts, courtesy of NordFX.
In particular, the local expert team has come up with another forecast based on the time-tested approach, which boils down to studying tons of related sources, expert opinions, as well as predictions made based on technical and graphical analysis.
EUR/USD.
When estimating the possible directions in which EUR/USD can move, when should definitely take into account several major events planned for the trading week, including macroeconomic reports, public speeches made by politicians and economists. On Tuesday, the Fed's Chairman is to hold a speech in the U.S. Congress. If the Fed isn't going to raise the interest rates, the pressure on the U.S. Dollar may increase. If that's the case, the EUR/USd exchange rate may increase all the way up to the pivot point of the mid-term sloping channel at 1.1400, with a possible move further up to 1.1500. However, this scenario is backed by 30% of the experts. The remaining 70% have the opposite point of view. They assume that a weaker Eurozone economy coupled with the chaos around the Brexit will eventually give the U.S. Dollar the uper hand, which will trigger a move down to 1.1215-1.1240.
GBP/USD
In this case, the key events to pay attention to are Theresa May's speech on Monday and Tuesday's Brexit voting in the British parliament. The parliament may reject the prime minister's offer once again, and after that Theresa May will have to make a tough decision. In particular, she may try to delay the Brexit or agree to quit the EU without a major agreement. Judging by the market sentiment, most investors are inclined to think that the British prime minister will eventually manage to win some time before quitting the EU for good. Anyways, 40% of the experts belive that the British Pound will succeed in standing the ground around 1.3000. Another 35% of them think that the pound will make it all the way up to 1.3200. The remaining 25% think the currency pair may go all the way down to 1.2770-1.2830. At the same time, it's interesting to note that a more expensive crude oil may back the pound's rally since crude oil and GBP are directly correlated and move pretty synchronously against USD.
USD/JPY
At the end of the past trading week, the Japanese Yen froze while waiting for move stimuli to push it to another exchange rate against the U.S. Dollar. Recently, the currency pair has been driven mostly by the worsening macroeconomic stats in the USA coupled with a possible recession in Germany, the trade war between Beijing and Washington as well as the biggest slowdown in the Chinese GDP growth over the last three decades. All of that altogether is the reason for growing pessimism among the international investors who are trying to estimate the near-term prospects fo the global economy in general and the Japanese economy in particular.
At first sight, it seems that the mentioned factors have been playing against the U.S. Dollar and therefore should play in favor of the Japanese Yen as one of the safe-haven assets out there. At the same time, market players are interested in riskier assets with higher profitability. According to EPFR, since the beginning of 2019, international investors have invested some 16 billion dollars in ETFs related to emerging economies. Given the specifics of the current situation, around 70% of the experts have voted for a further downtrend fo the Japanese Yen, which implies a rally of the USDJPY up to 111.50, with a chance to get another 100 points up. It's interesting to note, that most D1 indicators back this scenario. The remaining 30% stick to the opposite idea - a move down to 109.60-110.00 for USDJPY.
Cryptocurrencies
Since the long-awaited launch of JMP Coin by J.P.Morgan, the international community has been waiting for similar moves from Facebook and Amazon, as well as a range of other major players in the international market. However, those companies still haven't disclosed an information about the their own coins. At the same time, the SEC and the CFTC, as some of the major financial regulators out there, will have to make a lot of decisions, including unpopular ones, to clean up the mess in the entire market. When it comes to the trends for the week, the experts are divided into several groups again. 40% of them anticipate a Bitcoin rally up to $4,200-4,400, with a further jump up to $4,485, the highest level since November 2018. BTC/USD moving inside the 3,900-4,100 range is the most likely scenario for 35% of the experts. The remaining 25% of the experts count on Bitcoin getting back into the 3,500-3,800 area.
