It has already been a volatile week for currencies, and traders expect the lively market conditions to persist through the New York close on Friday. Geopolitical factors have played a major role in market movements this week, but traders anticipate a shift in focus toward macroeconomic fundamentals, with a series of key data releases scheduled for the remainder of the week, culminating in the U.S. employment data early in the New York session on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has been significant volatility across major currency pairs this week, but as usual, the standout has been USD\/JPY, and this trend is expected to continue in Friday\u2019s trading sessions. USD\/JPY has dropped nearly 7% since its high in early January, and despite a rally off last night\u2019s lows, it remains vulnerable to further downside movement. Interest rate differentials have played a significant role since the start of the year, as the Bank of Japan remains hawkish while expectations for a Federal Reserve rate cut have shifted forward from September to June\u2014or even May. If the jobs data also indicate a slowing U.S. economy, expectations could move even closer, further widening the interest rate differential and pushing USD\/JPY lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The consensus forecast for the headline NFP figure is for 160,000 jobs to have been added in the past month, with average hourly earnings increasing by 0.3% and the unemployment rate dipping to 4.0%. A significantly weaker-than-expected report could see the recent low just above 148.00 tested, while a stronger result would likely push the pair higher, with initial resistance around 152.30\u2014where both the daily resistance trendline and the 200-day moving average currently align.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Resistance 2: 158.03 \u2013 Long-Term Trendline Resistance<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Resistance 1: 152.30 \u2013 Trendline Resistance and 200 Day Moving Average<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Support 1: 148.07 \u2013 Trendline Support and 2025 Low<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Support 2: 144.40 \u2013 Long-Term Trendline Support<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has already been a volatile week for currencies, and traders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[462],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74915,"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74913\/revisions\/74915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icmarkets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}