U.S. Current Account, Jobless Claims, Japan CPI, EIA Oil Data

As the dollar traded overall weaker against other major currencies, the EUR/USD managed to make further advances to the upside, reaching a new 12-days high on Wednesday.

In the statement the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell delivered to Congress he stressed the commitment of the Fed to “promote maximum employment and stable prices” and indicating that the central banking organisation will make decisions “meeting by meeting” based on “incoming data and the evolving outlook”. He also acknowledged that we are currently in “extraordinary challenging and uncertain” times and the rising rate of inflation was an obvious surprise and “further surprise could be in store”. On the bright side the first quarter consumer demand still was strong and unemployment “near a 50-year low”.

On Wednesday services and manufacturing PMI numbers will be published for the eurozone and Germany.

Intraday volatility in gold was on Wednesday higher compared to the previous days and while some minor losses were seen in this market on weekly basis the precious metal is trading comparably stable with a downside of just around 0.2%. At the same time silver prices are down by 1.7% and at current levels on track to end the fourth week in a row lower. Palladium meanwhile recovered from the losses on Wednesday and is on track to end the week with an upside.

Oil prices fell to a new six weeks low as a barrel of WTI crude oil was traded on the futures markets at times below $102. Multiple factors could have affected this recent market move. One factor could be the more and more discussed probability of a recession, while for China there are concerns that growth could fall behind previously set targets.

In the evening hours the release of the weekly statistical bulletin by the American Petroleum Institute (API) with the reported build in crude oil inventories by more than five million barrels compared to the previous week being the most significant increase in any week since February. Gasoline stockpiles also increased by 1.2 million barrels, while a draw of almost 1.7 million barrels from distillate stockpiles was reported.

On Thursday the Energy Information Administration (EIA) is also publishing its weekly statistics on crude oil, gasoline and distillate stockpiles.

Major stock market indices like the US 500 and US Tech 100 closed moderately lower on Wednesday, though the weekly performance is still well into the green while markets turned again higher by Thursday morning and thus recovering most of the losses of the previous day.

Energy sector stocks (US Energy ETF +3.93%) were once again under pressure with the ETF moving intraday to a new low since April, trading down by more than 15% since the start of this month.

Stocks of multiple companies involved in development and manufacturing of COVID vaccines including Novavax (+9.94%) and Inovio Pharmaceuticals (+7.51%) traded with a strong upside, while Moderna was among the best-performing components of the NASDAQ Composite Index. Moderna (+4.87%) recently announced that its new COVID-19 vaccine to offer protection against the newer variant of the virus could be ready for distribution in August.

On Thursday Accenture and FedEx are set to publish their respective quarterly results. Then on Friday Carnival Corp is releasing its numbers.