EUR/JPY corrects further after weak EZ data

• EUR/JPY tallies a third consecutive day of losses as the pair continues to correct overbought conditions.
• Retail Sales from the EZ remained unchanged in May.
• Rising German and American yields to limit the JPY’s advance.

On Thursday, the EUR/JPY trades with losses and fell to it lowest point in seven days of 155.84 and then stabilised at 156.90, still holding daily losses. In that sense, the Euro lost traction after weak Retail Sales data, but rising German yields limit the European currency downside potential. In addition, hot labour market from the US fueled a rise in American yields and provide further challenges for the Yen to advance.

Retail Sales from the Eurozone remained unchanged in May while the markets expected a 0.2% increase, and the yearly measure now shows a 2.9% contraction. However, the 2,5 and 10-year German yields are advancing today, showing more than 1.5% increases and providing further support to the Euro. In addition, Factory Orders from Germany came in strong as they increased 6.4% in May vs the 1.5% expected by the markets and may also limit the Euro’s losses in the session.

Across the pond, the US reported hot labour market data. The Employment Change released by Automatic Data Processing, Inc showed that generally speaking, the US economy added 497K newly employed people in June, exceeding by far the expectations of 228K and accelerating from its previous figure of 278K. As a reaction, the 2-year American bond yield rose to its highest level since 2007 to 5.08% as these figures support a more aggressive Federal Reserve and provide another challenge for the Yen. Focus now shifts to Friday’s  Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) , expected to drop 225K from the previous 339K.

EUR/JPY Levels to watch

As expected, the EUR/JPY seems to have entered in a period of consolidation after more than two weeks showing overbought conditions. In that sense, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) points south and retreated from the overbought threshold while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) printed a red bar suggesting that bears are gaining strength. However, looking at the bigger picture, the cross still holds a positive outlook as it trades above its main Simple Moving Averages of 20,100 and 200 days.

Support Levels: 155.85, 155.25 (20-day SMA), 154.00.
Resistance Levels: 157.00, 157.50,158.00.