Federal Reserve has entered a pre-meeting blackout period and therefore traders will not hear any comments or speeches from Fed members until the decision announcement on Wednesday, 7:00 pm GMT next week. However, the same does not apply to members of other central banks. Investors will get to hear from a lot of ECB members today. When it comes to Fed the expectation is that pace of rate hikes will slow while recent comments from ECB members suggest that European Central Bank will continue with 50 basis point rate hikes at meetings in February and March. Having said that, any further confirmation (or denial) could be a source of volatility for EUR and European indices.
ECB members' speeches
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10:45 am GMT - ECB Vujcic
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1:30 pm GMT - ECB Visco
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2:30 pm GMT - ECB Panetta
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4:00 pm GMT - ECB Holzmann
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5:45 pm GMT - ECB President Lagarde
Taking a look at Euro Stoxx 50 (EU50) chart at D1 interval, we can see that the index has recently halted an advance after reaching the 4,200 pts resistance zone. EU50 started to pull back later on but managed to regain some ground on Friday. Index gained today but has already erased all of those gains to trade little changed on the day. A lot may depend on what ECB members say - if they stick to hawkish tone, indices may see some pressure. In such a scenario, the nearest support zone to watch can be found in the 4,010 pts area while key support lies slightly lower at 3,965 pts and is marked with the lower limit of market geometry and 23.6% retracement of the recent upward impulse.
Source: xStation5
