The dollar is consolidating within a tight range in early Thursday, following advance previous day and keeps overall bullish tone.
The minutes of Fed’s last policy meeting, released on Wednesday, reiterated central bank’s hawkish stance, although policymakers favored easing of the pace of interest rate hikes, they pointed to high inflation as key factor in the size and pace of further rate hikes, keeping the door open for possible acceleration in policy tightening.
The dollar index was in a steady ascend in past four weeks, inflated by hawkish signals from Fed and growing expectations that the central bank would remain in extended tightening path and, if needed, return to more aggressive mode, as series of strong rate hikes in 2022 started to show results on easing inflation, but obviously not at desired rate, keeping the levels which are unacceptably high for the central bank.
Daily studies remain bullish and underpin the action, with consolidation / shallow correction on fading bullish momentum and stochastic at the border of overbought zone, expected to offer better buying opportunities.
Dips should be ideally contained by daily Tenkan-sen (103.48) which marks initial and solid support, with potential deeper pullback expected to find ground above the base of daily Ichimoku cloud (102.86) to keep larger bulls in play.
Only sustained break of daily Kijun-sen (102.62) would sideline bulls and risk deeper drop.
Last Friday’s spike high and top of rising daily cloud (104.59) mark immediate resistance, break of which would expose strong barriers at 106.00/30 zone (Fibo 38.2% of 114.72/100.66 downtrend/weekly cloud top/200DMA).
Res: 104.59; 105.40; 106.03; 106.30.
Sup: 104.24; 103.98; 103.48; 102.86.
