GBP/USD ignores Brexit, Omicron woes past 1.3300, UK/US data, BOE’s Bailey eyed

• GBP/USD holds onto recovery moves from yearly low.
• France step-back on Brexit battle but it’s not fishing, traders push-back BOE rate hike calls to 2022 on more Omicron cases in UK.
• UK/US PMIs, ADP Employment Change will decorate calendar.
• Fed’s Powell, BOE’s Bailey and virus updates are important too.

GBP/USD picks up bids to refresh intraday top around 1.3325 heading into Wednesday’s London open. The cable pair refreshed yearly low on Tuesday before closing November with static daily performance and the heaviest monthly fall since last September.

The cable pair traders initially feared the South African variant of the coronavirus, dubbed as Omicron, as the UK’s count of the feared virus strain jumped to 22. The same pushed the CME’s BOEWatch Tool to portray market forecasts of no rate hike actions from the Bank of England (BOE).

Even so, a Brexit-positive headline from France, shared by Bloomberg, seems to have joined the month-end consolidation to favor GBP/USD buyers afterward. “France is preparing to offer Boris Johnson proposals for an agreement with the European Union on migration, less than a week after Emmanuel Macron slammed the UK Premier for not taking the issue seriously enough,” said Bloomberg.

On the other hand, Fed Chair Jerome Powell trigged a bounce in the US Treasury yields from a two-month low by suggesting extended inflation fears and discussion over faster taper in the December meeting. It’s worth noting that the mixed US data and mixed chatters over the prevailing vaccines’ capacity to tame the newly found COVID-19 variant join cautious optimism in China and receding virus cases from South Africa to favor GBP/USD buyers of late.

Moving on, the final readings of the Markit PMIs for November may offer intermediate clues but attention will be given to the US ISM Manufacturing PMI for clear direction. Further, US ADP Employment Change and Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony 2.0, as well as BOE Governor Andrew Bailey’s speech, will be crucial too.

Technical analysis

The GBP/USD pair’s corrective pullback seems to take clues from Tuesday’s bullish Doji candlestick at the multi-day low. However, bearish MACD signals and convergence of the 10-DMA and one-month-old descending trend line, around 1.3360, challenge the bulls.