Hey everyone! Welcome to this week's forex forecast for the week ending January 15th, 2021. It's so great to be back, I hope everyone's had a fantastic holiday, and I hope everyone's motivated to work 10x harder than last year. I'm wishing everyone nothing but the best, but apart from that, I'm TraderBart with A1 Trading, and this week I'll be looking at GBPUSD, EURCHF, USDJPY & XAUUSD.

GBP/USD

GU continues to move in this ascending channel, on the 21st of December, we saw price once again respect the channel's support and reject it. Currently, price has broken the previous higher high in the channel at 1.35 and is consolidating just above it, acting as new support. Bulls in the market are looking for price action confirmations of a precise touch and rejection to the 1.348 level and then long however on the other hand bears may wait for price to break below, then treat the 1.348 level as resistance and push down back to previous lows at 1.315. Now looking at fundamentals, there's a lot of mixed bias on where the Pound is heading next. Credit Agricole argued that given the lingering political and economic risks (a Covid-induced double-dip recession) in the UK, they believe that the GBP risks are tilted to the downside in the near-term, especially if the health situation in the UK continues to deteriorate.

EUR/CHF

Looking at this chart, we've got a clear ascending triangle forming with resistance at 1.085, and we can see that apart from where it's outlined on the chart above, this level has been acting as resistance since June 2020. Price is currently nearing the supportive trend line, and I'm looking to potentially go long once there are clear rejections to this trend line. However, if we don't get a full touch and rejection, I'll look to go long after seeing price break above the resistance, retest and then successfully treat this old resistance as new support. The Bank of America explains that they are skeptical about substantial further EUR strength, particularly during a Eurozone recession that is more severe than in most of the world. The long EUR market position also makes it one of the most vulnerable G10 currencies to an overall market risk-off.

USD/JPY

UJ has been travelling below this descending trend line since July 2020 and is now slowly approaching the trend line, expected at around 104.3. Bears in this market would look out for price action confirmations of a continued rejection to the trend line once we get a clear touch however bulls in this could potentially wait for price to break this structure, and once the previous resistance at 104.7 is met and broken, they could look for potential entries around there to complete the move back to the previous highs at 108. We could expect this structure to be broken, considering that the USD is now the weakest of the majors, having turned negative on the day following an overall disappointing December employment report with NFP printing at -140K versus consensus of +60K.

XAU/USD

Price is still in this overall bullish flag pattern; we saw a potential completed move to the upside as price was travelling in a short-term channel following a successful 3rd touch and rejection of the channel's supportive trend line. However, as we can see, this was broken, and price fell right through back inside the channel once again. If price continues to hold the current level at 1850, we could see the bullish break happen again however if price breaks below I think it's likely we'll get a 4th touch of the channel's support. The US Jobs report was mixed although the headline shocked to the downside, falling 140k, well beneath the estimates of a 71k rise, the unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7% (expected 6.8%), and the participation rate remained at 61.5%. Although the headline was grim, the prior was revised up to +336k from +245k. The wage data jumped to 0.8% m/m from 0.3% m/m (exp. 0.2%), likely as many of the lower-paid services jobs were lost as the Hospitality and Leisure sector battles the pandemic. It raises the prospects for more stimulus from fiscal authorities and combined with an entirely Democratic government, and it furthers the possibilities even more.