EUR/USD Forecast – December 21-25

Looking for the latest outlook, for the current week? Check out the section: EUR/USD Forecast.

The Euro had a terrible week, hit by bad news and losing major support lines. The upcoming week doesn’t have too many major indicators, but they could still move the Euro. Here’s an outlook for this week’s events, and an updated technical analysis for EUR/USD – the pair is in new ground.

EUR/USD chart with support and resistance lines marked on it. Click to enlarge:

The problems from Greece continued to hurt the Euro, and also the ZEW survey didn’t help. This week’s GfK Consumer Climate survey stands out. Let’s review the events. The extended technical analysis will follow:

1. German  GfK Consumer Climate: Published on Tuesday at 7:00 GMT. 2000 consumers are polled about their economic confidence. This index already reached 4.3 points in September, but deteriorated since then down to 3.7 points, as confidence is fragile. It’s predicted to tick down to 3.6 points this time.
2. NBB Business Climate: Published on Tuesday at 14:00 GMT. Despite coming from one of the Euro-zone’s smaller countries, Belgium, this indicator is highly regarded, since it’s a wide survey of 6000 businesses. This indicator has improved in the past 7 months and even exceeded expectations, but it still remained in the negative zone. It reached -8.8 points last month. An improvement to -4.3 points is expected now.
3. German Import Prices: Published on Wednesday at 7:00 GMT. In deflationary Europe, each price-related figure matters. Prices of imported good surprised with a rise of 0.5% last month, after falling in the previous month. This isn’t a very stable indicator. Prices are expected to rise by 0.2% this time.
4. French Consumer Spending: Published on Wednesday at 7:45 GMT. The continent’s second largest economy has seen impressing growth in consumer spending in the past two months with a neat rise of 1.1% last month. In both months, spending has been far better than early expectations. Spending is expected to rise by 0.5% this month.
5. Industrial New Orders: Published on Wednesday at 10:00 GMT. Although being a late figure, published almost two months after the measured month ended, this is still an important gauge for the economy. The last 4 months saw a strong growth in this indicator, that exceeded expectations each time. Last month saw the “weakest” growth, with a rise of 1.5% – but this was also far better than expected.

EUR/USD Technical Analysis

From the fragile close at 1.4625 last week, the Euro went under this minor support quite soon. It later made an impressive break under the very significant support region of 1.4444 – 1.4480 and fell as low as 1.4260 before closing at 1.4342.

Comparing to last week’s outlook, we have lots of new support lines, as the pair is in a totally different ground. Let’s start with the known lines, that turned from resistance to support lines.

1.4444 is the first resistance line, and it’s a major one. This is were the Euro got stuck in the summer, on its way up, before breaking higher. This line returns to that role. The other part of the area, 1.4480, is a minor resistance line.

Looking up, 1.4626, which very temporarily stopped the pair last week, is another minor resistance line. Further up, 1.48 was the bottom border of a range for a long time, and serves as a major resistance line.

Meet new support lines

1.42 worked as a support line before the Euro broke upwards, and now works again as a support line. It was tested also during this Friday. The pair was 60 pips away.

Further below, 1.40 is a round psychological number, and was also a stepping stone for the Euro when it went up. The round number makes it a strong support line.

The most important support line is much lower, at 1.3750. This was both a resistance line in the spring and later worked as a support line in June. Something really big has to happen before this line is breached.

I continue to to be bearish on EUR/USD.

My sentiment turned bearish on the pair last week. I believe that it will continue downwards, but probably won’t make such a strong move this week. The problems in the continent’s smaller countries make European growth seem fragile at the moment.

This pair enjoys excellent technical analyses on the web. Here are my favorites. Some were published a few days ago, and these authors will probably write an updated analysis soon:

• Casey Stubbs discusses the dollar strength in this holiday rally.
• The Geek Knows brings a weekly technical review on EUR/USD and looks forward.
• James Chen talks about the bearish stance after the uptrend breakdown.

I’ll add more later on.

Further reading:

• For a broad view of all the week’s major event in all currencies, read the  forex weekly outlook.
• For the Euro, read the  EUR USD Forecast.
• For GBP/USD, look into the  British Pound forecast.
• For the Australian dollar, read the  AUD/USD forecast.
• For USD/CAD, check out the  Canadian dollar forecast.

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