US recap: EUR/USD up on week as cost of Fed tightness eyed
AUD/USD-Old resistance has turned into support
Bulls lift sterling to April highs ahead of key UK CPI Wednesday
May 17 (Reuters) -The dollar index was flat on Friday and ended the week like it began, losing ground to euro and sterling recoveries, while USD/JPY's rebound from its intervention-suspected led plunge fizzled due to somewhat less alluring Treasury-JGB yield spreads and mixed U.S. data.
EUR/USD was little changed on the day but up 0.94% on the week after briefly eclipsing April's 1.0885 high on Thursday.
It rebounded off the Friday session's earlier low of 1.0836, which was at the 61.8% Fibo of the March-April slide that it cleared on Wednesday after soft U.S. CPI and retail sales data.
Two-year bund-Treasury spreads have bullishly tightened by 35bp from April's most negative levels and are now near where they were when EUR/USD was closer to March's 1.0980 peak, with 1.10 a major Fibo target off April's base.
EUR/USD's uptrend is being supported by indications that the euro zone economy is recovering while U.S. economic data have been on a disappointing trend, according the Citi's Economic Data Surprise indexes.
Due to much stickier inflation in the U.S. than the euro zone, interest rate futures are projecting the ECB will begin cutting rates in June, and perhaps three times by year-end, versus Fed cuts in September and December no longer being fully priced in.
Higher-for-longer U.S. rates versus faster falling ECB rates suggest more of a drag on the U.S. economy than the euro zone, and perhaps better demand for some euro investments.
Sterling rose 0.3% and marginally breached April's twin peaks at 1.2709. Prices are a bit overbought, having swung up rapidly from the lower 30-day Bolli and April 22 trough at 1.2299 to the upper 30-day Bolli this week.
The next macro focus is UK CPI data on May 22, where core inflation is forecast to fall to 3.6% from 4.2% and overall to 2.1% from 3.2%. The market is discounting a BoE rate cut by August and at least once more by December. BoE-ECB rate spreads are priced to widen another 10bp in the pound's favor by year-end, from the current 1.39%.
Aussie rose 0.2% as traders weighed the prospects for the latest Chinese efforts to revive the beleaguered property market, that as industrial and precious metals priced surged on Friday.
But USD/CNH rose 0.19% with more of a focus on Friday's poor Chinese retail sales and home price data that reminded core problems persists, regardless of strong exports which face increasing tariff increases.
For more click on FXBUZ
Editing by Burton Frierson
Randolph Donney is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own.
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