The first round of the French presidential election will be held on April 23 with the second round on May 7.
The forecast for the first-round vote for the three candidates: Le Pen, Macron and Fillion are 25.8%, 25.1% and 18.4% respectively. The chances for Macron and Le Peng getting into the second-round are 98% and 96% respectively, Fillion is facing an even more severe setback now as his wife is currently also under formal investigation associated with a fake parliamentary job.
Le Pen is the focus of the election because of her extreme right-wing policies and high probability to win the election. She takes a similar stance to Trump, the focus of her policies is French first, including anti-globalization, anti-immigrants, trade protectionism, making France leave the EU, repealing the Euro and reusing French Cyan etc.
Many French voters are in favour of Le Pen’s policies, due to France’s high unemployment rate and recent terror attacks; provoking citizens’ anti-foreigner sentiment.
France and Germany are the EU’s largest economies. If France also leaves the EU, following Brexit, then other member states will also likely follow, the EU will likely face the crisis of falling apart, which will result in a lower Euro.
Today UK Markit manufacturing PMI is to be released at 09:30 BST. The crucial US ISM Manufacturing and Prices Paid for March, to be released at 15:00 BST, will likely cause volatility for USD. The dollar index hit a 2-week high of 100.49 last Friday.
New York Fed president William Dudley will make a speech at 15:30 BST, followed by the FOMC member Harker at 20:00 BST, and the Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker at 22:00 BST.
