USDJPY: With attempts on the upside continuing to falter, the risk remains lower in the long term. With that said, further weakness is expected towards the 79.57 level, its May 05’2011 low on continued upside failures.

CRUDE OIL: The commodity’s continued struggle to form a bottom ended the past week following a break out of its triangle pattern pushing it through the 94.63 level.

This is a result of a sharp drop in the British pound combined with a slightly stronger Swiss franc.

GBP/USD reached a peak of 1.5998 at the beginning of August. Since then, it dropped and then recovered. While the Euro is breaking six month highs against the dollar and the Aussie hits 2 year highs, the Pound falls short of returning to 1.60. Britain isn’t doing so well:

Do you know the seasonal patterns which tend to play out in the forex markets? If so, then you were well positioned to take advantage of what we saw out of the likes of the dollar and the euro over the last couple of months. Both moved in accord with their historical tendencies during January and February.

If you’re going to learn about just one market-moving catalyst when it comes to foreign exchange trading, history shows it should be interest rate decisions by the world’s major central banks that move currency market more than any other news event. The reasoning behind this is pretty simple. The forex market typically views a currency from a country with high interest rates as more valuable than a currency from a country with low interest rates. That may be simplifying things a bit, but the fact is forex traders need to know when interest rate decisions are coming because being unprepared can mean you miss some great pip-making opportunities.

Mervyn King went to the Treasury Committee in parliament today and released a two negative statements:

The Swiss National Bank lowered the target Libor rate to 0.25%. That was widely expected. But the accompanying statement was staggering: SNB is really afraid of negative inflation and vowed to fight it with all its force. 

Whenever the dollar rises – the pound rises as well – and also against the dollar. And whenever the USD weakens, GBP weakens even more.