We are seeing some signs of vulnerability in EUR after a streak of six rallies in seven sessions. We touched a fresh weekly high in the North American session on Wednesday but we later closed lower and EUR is down through early Asia-Pacific trading.
Technically, the RSI and Stochastics are flashing highly overbought signals. We are also well above the mid-Bolliger Band. We think any move close to 1.2453 is a wonderful opportunity to establish shorts.
Perhaps the top story in the day ahead will be the results of Spain’s efforts to raise as much as €3.5 billion through the sale of 10 and 30-year bonds. On May 20, Spain paid 4.045% in a 10-year auction but the notes are currently trading near 4.939%. The market will want a yield close to 5.00%; if it’s above 5.25%, the euro will weaken. A failed auction (where it’s cancelled due to lack of interest) would knock the euro down about 200 pips, possibly more. Another metric to watch is the bid-to-cover ratio, which shows how many times the number of bids per dollar sold. A ratio below 1.5 would be worrisome while something over 2.0 would be a positive for the euro. For the 30-year bond auction, a yield over 6.10% would be euro-negative while under 5.70% would be positive.
Spain has about €16.2 billion in debt that needs to be paid in July and Madrid will need to raise funds in order to make the payments. If, however, Spain can find access to funds at reasonable borrowing rates, it won’t have any major debt obligations to repay until April 2011. Success at today’s auctions would clear the way for 10 months and give the euro room to breathe and retrace recent losses.
