Francesco Pesole, an FX Strategist at ING, believes that a data-packed day should offer investors some distraction from the Chinese virus story, which will, however, continue to drive most market movements.
"On the FX front, commodity currencies appear quite fragile, especially the Australian dollar, due to the combination with idiosyncratic downside risks. The Federal Reserve's message yesterday was – as expected – broadly unchanged, although markets detected an openness to future rate adjustments (which briefly dampened US rates and USD) from Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference. Turning to today’s US calendar, ING economists expect fourth quarter growth to inch lower to 2.0%, slightly below consensus (2.1%). The implications for the dollar should, however, be limited, as the notion of domestic economic resilience seems hard to dent for now. Fears related to the coronavirus may continue to put a floor under the USD today, thanks to sustained safe-haven flows."