Thursday Oct 1 2020 13:46
2 min
The pound endured some wild whipsaws today on a range of Brexit headlines. First sterling slid through the morning as the EU lodged its legal complaint over the internal market bill. GBPUSD hit the LOD at 1.2820 by 10am.
But then GBPUSD rallied aggressively through 1.295 on reports officials were close to entering the tunnel, with the FT’s Whitehall correspondent quoting one as saying: ‘We’ve gone from about 30% chance of a deal to the other way around. I think it’s almost certain we’ll enter the tunnel.’ The implication that officials see a 70% likelihood of a deal got sterling bulls running the stops.
Sterling pushed up to a fresh two-week high, but the 1.30 round number was not tested as the rally ran out of legs at 1.2980. The 1.30 level is the big horizontal and Fibonacci resistance to unlock the move to the mid-1.30s once a Brexit deal is signed.
However, cable was back down almost one big figure again, taking a 1.28 handle after an EU official said there is no sign of a landing zone on fisheries, or level playing field. At send time GBPUSD was sitting on the 1.29 round number around the mid-point for the day.
What we learned from this:
Sterling is on the hook to some wild price swings on headlines, which we knew would be the case. No one wants to try 1.30 unless there are more concrete rumours from ‘sources’. Talks wrap up tomorrow – more market-moving headlines to come.
Twitter is a very good source of information for trading – cable shot higher a couple of minutes after the initial 70/30% tweet. Algos were slow to respond for once – shows they don’t read Twitter very well – yet (H/T @PriapusIQ).
It does seem like there are tentative signs of ‘progress’ despite all the chuntering around the internal market bill, which looks increasingly like a sideshow to the main event of trade talks.
In short, a deal seems more likely than not. I’ve moved from 60/40 to 50/50 after the IMB to back to 60/40 again.
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