Forex Today: Stocks Rise Ahead of Jackson Hole And GDP Data

The Jackson Hole symposium of central bankers begins today, with a speech from Fed Chair Powell commencing proceedings. The speech and hints on monetary policy it contains will be keenly watched as a strong US Dollar has been driving markets over recent days and weeks.

The US Dollar has begun to sell off from its recent peak, leading to speculation that we may see a more hawkish policy tilt from Powell lead to a “buy the rumor, sell the fact” situation with the greenback.
Despite the minor selloff in the US Dollar, 2-year US treasury yields are continuing to rise and are not far from their long-term high reached earlier this year.
Global stock markets have risen over the past day, partly due to new stimulus measures announced by China, although the Chinese stock market is suffering a down day. The S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq 100 Index are trading higher, as is the European DAX.
In the Forex market, the US Dollar is the weakest major currency, while the Australian and New Zealand Dollars are the strongest, over the short-term. However, there is a valid bullish long-term technical trend in the US Dollar which may well reassert itself, especially in the EUR/USD and GBP/USD currency pairs which broke to new long-term lows earlier this week. The US Dollar Index remains close to a 20-year high.
Today will see the release of US Preliminary GDP data, which will give further indication as to whether the US is in a recession, and how strong it is if so.
Daily new coronavirus cases globally dropped last week for the fifth consecutive week.
It is estimated that 67.5% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination, while approximately 7.6% of the global population is confirmed to have contracted the virus at some time, although the true number is highly likely to be much larger.
Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 603.5 million with an average case fatality rate of 1.07%.
The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be most significantly increasing in Japan and South Korea.