The U.S. Department of Commerce will be releasing its preliminary GDP data for the first quarter of 2018 today at 12:30 GMT. According to the economists polled, the U.S. economy is forecast to have increased 2.0% on the quarter ending March 2018. This marks a somewhat slower pace of increase in the economy compared to 2.9% gain in GDP in the previous quarter.
The forecasts on the GDP data are consistent with the view based on various economic indicators released through the first three months of the year. The first quarter GDP growth is also known to be seasonally weak adding further weight to a potentially soft reading on the data.
Despite the dovish view, there is scope that the U.S. GDP could be revised higher in the coming months. This comes amid the fact that the U.S. economy continued to push along at a healthy pace. However, there was some slowdown in the momentum of business activity. Various indicators such as the ISM's manufacturing PMI showed that manufacturing activity was seen to be somewhat subdued.
Other forecasting tools also suggest that the U.S. economy might have grown around a pace of 2.0% - 2.2% during the first three months of the year. With the markets already pricing in the event, a surprise reading that is higher than forecast could potentially keep the U.S. dollar on the front foot.
Based on the above, today's binary trading signal is USDJPY. The currency pair had posted strong gains earlier this week ahead of the BoJ meeting that was held earlier today. Price action was mostly muted on the day.
In the near term, we expect USDJPY to retrace to the downside. Therefore, we would purchase daily PUT options at 109.15 for a 21:00 GMT expiry time. We expect USDJPY to correct the gains and close lower on the day.
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