Trade Talks Back On – and Dollar, Yuan Rise in Forex Markets

The long-awaited resumption of trade talks between the US and China appeared to have been secured over the weekend.

The trade battle between the two countries has been causing problems for months, but the G20 summit this past weekend is believed to have been the site of an agreement between the two sides.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump are understood to have struck an accord – leading to the two countries’ currencies rising in value.

The US dollar index, which monitors the performance of the currency compared to six others from around the world, went up by 0.4% to reach 96.601 at one stage. In its pair with the single European currency, the latter of which performed well last week, the dollar surged by almost half a percentage point.

The offshore Chinese yuan was up by over 0.5% in its pair against the dollar – although this was later curbed by a relatively low domestic productivity statistical release.

Now that a new forex trading week is here, it’s time to look at what the economic calendar has in store.

First off, today (Monday) will see a slowdown in some North American trading areas due to the Canada Day holiday which closes all banks in the country.

Over the border in the US, though, there’ll be plenty of action. The ISM Manufacturing PMI for June will be out at 2pm GMT and is expected to show a change from 52.1 to 51.0.

The ISM Prices Paid monitor for June is predicted to show a slight change from 53.2 to 53.0 when it comes out at 2pm GMT.

Looking ahead to Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s interest rate decision for July will be out at 4.30am GMT. This is still widely expected by analysts to show a change from 1.25% to 1%.

A speech from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s governor, Phillip Lowe, will follow later at 9.30am GMT.

There’ll be other central banker speeches across the day too. At 10.35am GMT, there’ll be a speech from the US Federal Reserve’s John C. Williams, who is the president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee.

On Wednesday, a speech from the Bank of Japan’s Yukitoshi Funo will occur at 1.30am GMT.

Continuing jobless claims will be out of the US early this week due to the Independence Day holiday scheduled for Thursday. Instead, they’ll be released on Wednesday at 12.30pm GMT. Continuing jobless claims for the dates around June 21^st are expected first and were last recorded at 1,688,000. Initial jobless claims for the week around June 28^th will be out then as well and were last recorded at 227,000.

A speech from Dr Ben Broadbent, who sits on the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, will take place at 1.15pm GMT.

The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index, which comes from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) in the US, will be out at 2pm GMT. This is expected to show a change from 56.9 to 56.0.