• The market mood remains fairly mixed so far today
• There is a barrage of 7 Federal Reserve speakers due Tuesday, NY’s Williams among them
• Central banks have lost a degree of trust, says ECB’s Makhlouf
• UK April payrolls change -135k vs 31k prior
• Germany May ZEW survey current conditions -34.8 vs -37.0 expected
• Eurozone Q1 GDP second estimate +0.1% vs +0.1% q/q prelim
• IEA warns latest oil price drop is running against backdrop of a supply crunch in 2H 2023

Markets:

• CHF leads, AUD lags on the day
• European equities little changed; S&P 500 futures down 0.1%
• US 10-year yields down 2.9 bps to 3.479%
• Gold down 0.7% to $2,005.98
• WTI crude down 0.3% to $70.92
• Bitcoin down 1.0% to $27,088

It was sideways session as markets are looking fairly tentative after the slightly optimistic start to the new week yesterday.

There wasn’t much meaningful headlines but we did get a bit of a red flag from the UK jobs data, where payrolls declined for the first time since February 2021 as unemployment claims also ticked higher. That might be a sign that the economic weariness is starting to weigh on labour market conditions.

The pound dropped initially on that with GBP/USD falling from 1.2510 to 1.2465 as the dollar also gained some ground amid a more cautious risk mood. But the pair bounced as the dollar surrendered gains, rising back up to 1.2530 currently – little changed on the day.

The greenback saw gains evaporate as equities pared early losses as well during the session. But the overall mood remains more pensive with US futures also marginally lower at the moment.

EUR/USD nudged a little higher from 1.0870 to 1.0900 briefly before settling just below that. Meanwhile, AUD/USD is staying pressured and down 0.4% to 0.6670 after a brief rebound to 0.6690 earlier in the session.

The moves in markets are rather mixed with commodities all mostly lower, with oil moving down after a positive start to the day and precious metals lagging. WTI crude fell to $70.55 before paring some losses back to $70.90 levels now while gold is trailing down by 0.7% to near $2,006 and silver also down 1.4% to $23.77 currently.

It’s now over to US retail sales and Fedspeak to see if the mood music will change in North America trading.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

Everything
is easy when you’re Adobe. If your earnings report is not too good, you can use
Photoshop and then say that this was not photoshopped; who can argue? Adobe
looks like one of these unique flagship companies with no competitors. But is
it good or bad? Let’s look at charts for Adobe stock and investigate what
analysts think about its future.

Adobe suffered
the fate of many tech companies that ascended to the top during the pandemic
and then faced a rapid decline. Of course, Covid-19 wasn’t an event easy to
forecast, but there’s a large number of things you can predict. The US
economic calendar is a trading tool that helps you with this as it
includes all the significant financial events and lets you utilize them to
forecast subsequent market movements.

In the
last year, there has been almost no trace of Covid consequences, but Adobe
shares haven’t demonstrated stability as well as most of the world
markets.

At the
same time, the pandemic and the world crisis didn’t make Adobe products like
Photoshop, Lightroom, or Acrobat less relevant. The advantages of all these
programs didn’t disappear. Moreover, many digital workers and companies have no
other alternatives. Especially after the announcement about the acquisition of
Figma, a top-rated and relatively cheap service that was supposed to fight
evil, not join it (disclaimer: this deal between Adobe and Figma is not
finished yet because of the regulators’ investigation). It seems Adobe doesn’t
have too many rivals, and there are now even fewer.

Another
significant moment is Adobe’s advanced cloud subscription model. Combined with
a large customer base and high subscription prices, it allows for a stable flow
of profit. The last earnings report proves it. In Q1 2023, EPS and revenue
turned out better than analysts’ expectations – 3.3% higher for EPS and 0.7%
for revenue. Additionally, Adobe’s reported revenue became record-breaking –
13% YoY in constant currency. But we should also pay attention to slowing down
revenue growth compared to previous years.

The
company hasn’t forgotten about trends like AI technologies and actively
integrates them into its products. For example, Adobe released Firefly, the
fertile AI field that allows users to edit images by typing a text.

Many
analysts believe that Adobe is a strong business that might be an excellent
long-term investment. The consensus forecast for this tech giant is +15% in the
next 12 months.

But
don’t hurry to add these stocks to your portfolio. Remember that before buying
or selling any assets, you should do your own analysis.

This article was written by ForexLive at www.forexlive.com.

On the daily chart below for
AUDUSD, we can see that the price recently sold off again from the top of the
range and the 38.2% Fibonacci
retracement level. We’ve been stuck in this range since the
collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank as the market is still uncertain if the
events will help the Fed to bring inflation down fast to target without a major
hit to the economy, or if we will have a worse hard landing than expected.

The
sellers, nevertheless, keep leaning on the resistance and they’ve been quite successful
for now. Needless to say, that an eventual breakout on either side of the range
should lead to big moves and traders should be prepared for that.

On the 4 hour chart below, we can
see that the trendline that was supporting the rally
towards the resistance got broken last Thursday and the sellers immediately
piled in to extend the selloff targeting the support at 0.6563. Yesterday, the
price bounced, and we got a pullback to the red long period moving
average that is now acting as resistance for the bearish short term trend. Such
pullbacks are generally healthy in a trend, especially after such quick moves.

On the 1 hour chart below, we can
see that the price pulled back all the way up to the swing high level where we
have also confluence with the 38.2% Fibonacci
retracement level. Since tapping into that resistance zone,
the price fell again and it’s now pulling back to the blue short period moving
average. The market is likely to find sellers here as the moving average
crossover will be taken as a hint that the bigger pullback has ended. Today, we have the US Retail Sales
report and it’s expected to be a market moving event. Worse than expected data
is likely to be taken as bad for risk sentiment, ultimately favouring the USD,
while better than expected figures may weaken the USD again.

This article was written by ForexLive at www.forexlive.com.

• I think we have lost a degree of trust
• That affects what we should be doing with our decision making
• We should be explaining it to more people, do more in terms of thinking about the audience we’re talking to
• We need to be explaining what we’re seeing and why we’re making the judgements we are and talk to the people and communities in a language they can understand

Just that little bit of trust, eh? That’s a bit modest. Pfft. He’s speaking in the context of explaining the decision making by major central banks to a wider audience, and not just financial markets.

This comes of course after having previously brushed aside inflation pressures back in 2021, with the ECB profusely calling it „transitory“. Remember that? And then all of a sudden now needing to pile on aggressively rate hikes in the past year.

Props to him for admitting it but even with knowing what they should do better, let’s face the facts. Central bankers are pretty much just like politicians at this point and they will not have played things out differently given another chance anyway.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.

Here’s a snapshot of the equities space:

• S&P 500 futures -0.2%
• Nasdaq futures flat
• Dow futures -0.3%
• Eurostoxx +0.1%
• Germany DAX +0.1%
• France CAC 40 flat
• UK FTSE flat

It’s not pretty but it’s not bad either, to put things nicely. And the lack of any real direction so far in the session is making it tough to get a grip on things happening elsewhere as well.

In the major currencies space, the dollar is still just slightly on the softer side while bond yields are continuing to stay heavier on the session.

At this point, it looks like traders are just hoping for a notable surprise miss/beat on the next big data in order to start jumping around. Let’s see whether or not the US retail sales data will offer that opportunity.

This article was written by Justin Low at www.forexlive.com.