On 20th February the markets will lack one of the key players – the United States – in connection with the celebration of Presidents Day which commemorates the birthday of George Washington and the other presidents from US. As a result, the local stock markets will be closed and traders enjoy an extended weekend.


The fall of the Japanese trade balance – what with JPY?

During Asian session we met macroeconomic data from Japan regarding changes in export-import. The size of import in January increased by 8.5%, while exports slowed to 1.3% as a result of reducing the total value of the balance sheet to 0.16 trillion yen.

As for the USD/JPY, after the third test of 115.00 in the last month (level coincides with the moving average and the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement), quotes began to slide. The beginning of the new week brings, however, a delicate correction in favor of the USD:

USDJPY D1

Family Day and Presidents Day – why North America has a long weekend?

Presidents Day celebrations always fall on the 3rd Monday in February. Feast was established in 1879 by the decision of the US Congress as George Washington’s Birthday (Washington’s birthday) to commemorate on February 22 birthday of America’s first president. For Americans, this is an opportunity, inter alia, to take advantage of store sales and a long weekend.

Canadian Family Day also falls every year in 3 Monday in February – in some provinces but under a different name or is celebrated on a different day. It should be noted that government workers do not enjoy the privilege of free time on that day, work normally. Feast was first celebrated in 1990 in Alberta to promote family values giving them opportunity to spend time together. Since then, the celebration became popular in other parts of the country.

Both in the US and Canada on February 20 will not function stock exchanges which definitely can reduce liquidity in the US and Canadian instruments and currency pairs. Commercial brokers are changing schedules also – take a look at the information that on this subject gave your brokerage house.

Calm calendar for the beginning of week.

On start of the European session markets got familiar with the values of the January German PPI, the dynamics of which increased in terms of y/o/y to 2.4% (from 1.0%) and in terms of m/o/m to 0.7% (from 0.4%). Data has not attracted more interest, however, and passed by unnoticed by the market . In the afternoon, attention should be focused on the Canadian wholesale trade for December, but also those data will not be a very important publication.

Calendar for the remainder of the week are shown below:

The next four days we will not be able to complain about lack of macroeconomic publications. As you can see in the above calendar Wednesday promises to be the most interesting and the results of the British GDP, European inflation and the publication of the minutes of the FOMC meeting.

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