Investors will need a clear reason to lean a bit harder on the USD – Scotiabank

The USD is trading mostly lower against its major peers to start a busy week. Economists at Scotiabank analyze Greenback’s outlook.

USD remains firm

Generally, the USD remains firm but the DXY is not advancing and remains below the early October peak. Price action does suggest there is better USD selling pressure emerging on modest gains over the past few sessions and the oscillator studies indicate the DXY is heavily overbought on the medium-term charts. 

But investors will need a clear reason to lean a bit harder on the USD from here and it’s not obvious where that cue will come from; month end might not do it (passive rebalancing signals look neutral) while the Fed may retain the pretense that it is still thinking about tightening a bit more and markets are expecting decent (190-200K) NFP jobs at the end of the week. 

One potential bump in the road for US markets is the Treasury’s quarterly refunding Wednesday, just ahead of the Fed decision, amid more intense scrutiny of bond supply and a widening US budget deficit.