What Events Will Affect Your Trading This Week?

Despite a quiet start to the week for the US holidays, there is still plenty going on. The Reserve Bank of Australia unexpectedly kept interest rates at 4.1%, sending the Aussie dollar lower before flying back like a boomerang to where it was trading, at 0.6680 against the USD.

On Wednesday (21:00), we get to see the minutes of the FOMC's last meeting, where they held rates at 5.25%. However, the market is pricing in at least two more rate hikes by the end of the year, so traders will be looking for clues in the minutes as to if and when this might happen.

With Saudi Arabia announcing an extension to their oil production cuts through to August (and possibly further) and Russia following up with a 500K cut of its own, the price of WTI rallied on Monday before slipping back to $70 a barrel. Keep an eye on US oil inventories (18:00 Thursday) as there was a massive 9 million drawdown last week which surprised the market and could further support the price.

On Friday (15:30), the US will release its latest unemployment numbers. Despite seeing an increase of 339K in Non-Farm payrolls last month, there was a rise in the unemployment rate to 3.7%. Canadian unemployment data is also released at the same time, which makes USDCAD particularly volatile over this period.