EUR/USD outlook after today’s Draghi’s speech
ECB Governor Mario Draghi made a scheduled speech earlier today. Overall, his comments were dovish. It seems that the central bank officials are starting to talk down markets’ taper expectations. The CB head Draghi said that there is no need to deviate from the present wording of bank’s monetary policy stance.
Ultra-loose ECB measures proved to be effective. The general outlook for the euro area economies is gradually improving. The unemployment rate did decrease in the past years, but it is still unclear how quickly lower jobless figures feed into wages. The inflation rate is still well below the coveted 2%; there is scant evidence that it is steady enough (we saw inflation figures hitting ECB target in February; in March, we saw them slowing dramatically driven by lower energy prices), thus, a substantial degree of monetary accommodation is still needed. So, according to Mario Draghi, it is too early to snap into the reassessment of the current monetary policy stance; the ECB policymakers will wait for more evidence before leaving the path of their current ultra-loose monetary policy.
EUR/USD skipped some points on Mario Draghi’s dovishness. Going ahead the euro will probably stay under some pressure in light of the release of ECB monetary policy meeting accounts. At the present moment, the pair is still going through its consolidation phase – it is trading around 1.0690. The immediate resistances can be found at 1.0730 (100-H4 MA) and 1.0770 (23.6% Fibo level traced from this year low). On the flip side, there are several supports located at 1.0655 (200-H4 MA) and 1.0620 (50% Fibo retracement level). They are likely tested if the wording of the minutes is extremely dovish.
