Another week saw another historic record of the Swiss franc against the US dollar. Where will this stop? The upcoming week consists of a few important indicators to rock the Swissy.
Apart from the blow that the dollar got from Bernanke, the Swiss franc also enjoyed the KPF economic barometer, which jumped to 2.29 points, showing the strength of the economy.
USD/CHF daily chart with support and resistance lines on it. Click to enlarge:
- Retail Sales: Monday, 7:15. The volume of sales in Switzerland rose by 1.5% last month, after two disappointing months of drops. This recovery is expected to continue also now, with an even stronger rise of 2.3%.
- SVME PMI: Monday, 7:30. This purchasing managers’ indicator has shown a slowdown last month, with the score falling from the highs above 60 to 59.3. Another drop to 58.8 points is likely now. Note that this survey of 200 managers is still on the positive side, above 50, indicating growth.
- Unemployment Rate: Friday, 5:45. The level of unemployment in Switzerland is of envy to any country. It’s now expected to make another dip, from 3.3% to 3.2%. This will boost the Swiss franc.
USD/CHF Technical Analysis
The path of Dollar/Swiss was all downhill. A false break above the 87.80 line (mentioned last week) was very temporary, and we reached a new historic low at 0.8626 before closing at 0.8650.
Looking down, there aren’t too many lines. Initial support is found at the fresh low of 0.8626. Further support will possibly be found at 0.85.
Looking up, 0.8780 is the first line of resistance, after being a trough recently. It switched its role. Above, 0.89. This is likely to be a tough barrier on any recovery attempt.
Moving higher, we meet 0.90, which is not only a round number but also worked in both directions. Above, the pair will encounter resistance at 0.9125. It provided support twice in the past month, but was broken just now.
Rather close above, 0.92 is the next barrier – it that held the pair at the beginning of March and at the end of February. Higher above, 0.93 was a trough early in the year and is another round number. It works as minor resistance.
More significant resistance appears at 0.9370, which capped recovery attempts for quite a few days at the beginning of March. Further above, we find 0.95 – it worked twice – in October and December and now works as minor resistance.
The last line for now is 0.96, which provided support at the beginning of the year. There are more lines on the upside, but they’re far out in the distance.
I am bearish on USD/CHF.
Bernanke supplied more reasons for the dollar to fall. Add the hawish comments from the head of the Swiss National Bank, the rising inflation in Switzerland, the problems in Europe, and you have a recipe for more gains for the Swiss franc. In addition, the situation in Syria is getting very complicated, with fears of an Iranian-led coup against Assad. This adds to the pressures on oil prices, which push Dollar/Swiss lower.
Also FX Tech Strategy sees the pair broadly based to the downside.
Further reading:
- For a broad view of all the week’s major events worldwide, read the USD outlook.
- For EUR/USD, check out the Euro/Dollar forecast.
- For the Japanese yen, read the USD/JPY forecast.
- For GBP/USD (cable), look into the British Pound forecast.
- For the Australian dollar (Aussie), check out the AUD to USD forecast.
- For the New Zealand dollar (kiwi), read the NZD forecast.
- For USD/CAD (loonie), check out the Canadian dollar
Share
