All eyes on Jackson Hole and on Jerome Powell’s speech
In the evening and Asian session, we have seen the US dollar failing to break below 1.1100 against the Euro. This can be attributed to the jittery nature of the market ahead of Jerome Powell’s speech later today.
That momentum ran out of the initial jobless claim number print that showed that the US labour market is not imploding. In the wake of the release, we saw the Rand briefly breaking above R18.0000 but has since returned below R18.0000. The resistance of the Rand is quite impressive given the sell-off in other EM’s of late, and this only confirms our overall notion that the Rand can trade stronger as we head into the back end of the year.
The yearly Jackson Hole symposium is underway, and this year, all eyes will be on Jerome Powell’s speech and whether the market can glean any insight into the possible rate-cutting cycle and how fast it will be. The nature of these speeches is normally that not too much will be revealed, but nevertheless, the market will go over the speech with a fine tooth comb. Should any new information be forthcoming, expect the market to be volatile around the speech.