Friday brings a subdued start across all markets.

Crypto sees BTC still glued to $10,000 and seems happy to dance either side of it. ETH continues to hold around $218. That aside, very little to tell. The weekend, as usual, would be a different story.

Usual shenanigans with liquidity and halfway through Saturday we see a very sudden drop. Hard to say why and hard to say which coin led the way. ETH dropped from $220 to a low of $202. BTC from $10,100 to $9,350.

Much of the move happened in a space of less than 30 minutes. All I can do is put it down to a heavy hitter trying to move the market. All it does is highlight the lack of liquidity in these markets and the struggle crypto has ahead to get back to the highs from June.

FX, equities etc. were still digesting Thursday’s ECB rate announcement. At the end of the day the USD appeared to be the main beneficiary although somewhat ironically, less so against the EUR.

Friday that theme would continue.

USDJPY edges back to 108.80, EUR slips to 1.1130 again and GBP is back to 1.2415. AUDUSD also continues a path lower, trading down to 0.6920.

All eyes would be on US Q2 GDP data which came in better than expected at +2.1%. The USD catches a few more points but seems reluctant to play.

US equity futures point to a higher open probably helped more by strong earnings results from McDonalds and Alphabet than anything else. And so that trend would continue for the day with the USD making more gains.

GBP drops to 1.2376 and AUD to 0.6902. EUR continues to hold 1.1110 but feels like only a matter of time before it’s retested. Equities close at their highs, with the S&P and Nasdaq at record highs.

One late day item of interest was a headline that President Trump had met with his advisors to discuss possibly intervening to weaken the USD. It appears that the overwhelming sentiment was not to act and allow the markets to determine the value. However, on Saturday Trump countered this by saying,“I didn’t say I’m not going to do something” on the dollar. Keep an eye out for further headlines on this subject. Intervention is rarely pretty, and from my experience. Rarely works in the long term. Just ask the Swiss National Bank!

A quick look at AUDUSD from a technical perspective.

Several attempts at rallies over 0.7000 were thwarted and now we start to look at imminent support. The threat of Fed rate cut at the end of the month is doing little to dampen USD demand and AUDUSD is suffering as a result. As you can see from the 2H chart, we ended last week sitting right on support just ahead of 0.6900.

Next stop is 0.6832 and only the very temporary January ‘flash crash’ low of 0.6737 stands in the way of deeper losses.