First, a review of last week’s events:
EUR/USD. As expected, the last week had a lot of trouble for both the euro and the US dollar. The pair visited both the upper and lower boundaries of the medium-term side corridor 1.1525-1.1830 during the last five days. In the end, the victory was with the dollar. The reason for this were the Fed meeting results, along with the growth of US GDP and inflation in the Eurozone, as well as problems in Italy, whose government published the budget for 2019. with a deficit of 2.4% (instead of the expected 2%). As a result, having shown volatility of 245 points, the pair completed the weekly session at 1.1602;
GBP/USD. Recall that last week 55% of experts voted for the growth of this pair, 30% gave their votes for its fall, and the remaining 15% were for a sideways trend. And this discrepancy turned out to be the most accurate forecast. The pair was rising for the first half of the week, reaching 1.3225 at the maximum, and was going down during the second half, feeling for a local bottom near the level of 1.3000. As a result, it went down by only 45 points during the five working days, finishing at 1.3030;
USD/JPY. The scenario, for which 40% of analysts, graphical analysis on D1 and 100% of trend indicators had voted, provided for the pair to grow to the area of 113.20-113.75. And the pair did grow indeed, reaching the high at 113.70. The reason for the fall of the yen were the statements of the head of the Bank of Japan Haruhiko Kuroda and the head of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. The first of them said that the Japanese regulator did not plan to curtail the mitigation policy. Moreover, the interest rate, which is now minus 0.1%, can be lowered further. As for Powell, he confirmed at a press conference that, in addition to the increase on Wednesday, September 26, the Fed was planning another increase in interest rates in 2018 and three more increases in 2019. In this situation, the reaction of the markets was predictable: the dollar continued its active growth and met the end of the week at 113.68;
Cryptocurrencies. There was no special news that could seriously move the crypto market in one direction or another last week. The cryptocurrencies included in the TOP-10 behaved accordingly. During the first half of the week, the bitcoin showed a 7.5% drop, followed by a 7.25% increase. As a result, the pair BTC/USD did not leave the range between $6,000 and $7,000, keeping in an even narrower channel, $6,325-6,835. The litecoin (LTH / USD) and the ripple (XRP/USD) are closing the week almost at the same place where they started it. It was only the ethereum (ETH/USD) that showed a drop of 8% during the seven days, dropping to $225.0 per coin, and is now at the level of September 6-7.