The US dollar ended the week mixed in thin holiday-trading conditions, as traders await key economic data due this week.
In terms of data, Friday saw the US Trade Deficit fall to -$62.0b in October, worse than expectation of -$59.2b, while the UK GDP in Q3 was left untouched at 0.5% qq. The main interest on Friday was in the oil market, which fell more than 2%; dragged down by uncertainty over whether OPEC will be able to reach an output deal, after Saudi Arabia said it will not attend talks on Monday with non-OPEC producers to discuss supply cuts.
BoE to release stress tests
The Bank of England this week will release its stress test results of Britain’s biggest lenders, after measuring their resilience to a dramatic economic downturn, in the instance of a hard-Brexit. The tests were introduced in the wake of the financial crash in 2008, and are based on hypothetical scenarios devised by the Bank of England to measure how well banks can cope with specific situations.
With Carney and his team placing keen emphasis on the results, and the dark cloud of a hard-Brexit potentially looming, its effects on the city of London are becoming ever concerning for the UK economy.
Data to come
The week is due to start off fairly slow in terms of data, with the only real noise on Monday coming from Mario Draghi, as he speaks about the potential of the ECB adding further QE at their meeting in December. Things will however, heat up as we head towards Friday’s US Jobs report for November as well as German CPI and US provisional Q3 GDP figures released on Tuesday. Wednesday will see the oil price in focus due to the OPEC meeting.