Time sure flies in the world of forex, doesn’t it?
It seems like it was only yesterday that we were starting the second quarter of the year. And now, here we are, wrapping up Q2 and getting ready to launch the second half of 2013.
Before we make the big transition, let’s revisit the world’s top banks’ forecasts for Q2 2013 and see how accurate their predictions were.
EUR/USD: The big banks were pretty much spot on with their forecasts for EUR/USD. Yes, the pair saw its fair share of ups and downs this quarter, but it eventually settled just a few pips above the 1.3000 handle. Reassuring words from the ECB launched the euro higher early in April.
In June, the pair shot off to new highs as the dollar weakened across the board, only to come tumbling back down after the Fed announced plans to wind down its asset purchases.
GBP/USD: It looks like the pound was a lot more resilient than analysts had expected. Instead of falling down to 1.5000, it actually held its ground against the dollar and is currently trading just around its start-of-the-quarter levels.
Its resilience shouldn’t be all that surprising – after all, we did see a lot of positive reports come out of the U.K. this quarter.
USD/JPY: Analysts were right to expect USD/JPY to rise this quarter, but even the world’s biggest banks didn’t expect to see it climb as much as it did in Q2 2013. After beginning the month of April around 93.00, the price surged higher and never looked back.
Right now, it’s almost 400 pips above the 95.00 consensus forecast! The two factors that contributed the most support for the pair were the Fed’s plans to taper QE and the BOJ’s aggressively easy monetary policy.USD/CHF: They were surprisingly accurate with this pair. At one point, the pair had risen to as high as .9839, only to nosedive and fall to as low as .9130.
But in the last few days of the quarter, it staged a rally that took it back where it was at the start of April — within 100 pips of forecasts.
USD/CAD: Few expected USD/CAD to climb the way it did. Forecasts saw it trading around 1.0100, but because of the great dollar rally (and comdoll sell-off), the pair is now trading just below the 1.0500 handle.
AUD/USD: AUD/USD is trading nowhere near forecasts, and it seems as the Reserve Bank of Australia is to blame. The RBA cut its interest rates to an all-time low and really sapped demand for the high-yielding Australian dollar.
AUD/USD bust right through the 1.0300 predictions, broke below parity, and is now chilling below .9300.
NZD/USD: Just like the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar took a massive hit this quarter as well. Apparently, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand had been secretly intervening in the markets to weaken its currency.
From the looks of it, their sneaky little trick seems to be working, as NZD/USD is about 500 pips below forecasts and early-April levels.
Now that we’ve compared forecasts with the end-of-quarter spot rates, it’s pretty clear to see that even the world’s top banks can mess up their predictions. This just goes to show how unpredictable the forex markets really are.
What we should learn from this is that you should never base your trades solely on someone’s forecasts. No one knows what’s going to happen, which is why it’s extremely important to conduct your own analysis and remain flexible when trading.