GBP/USD waffled near the 1.2550 level on Monday, kicking off the holiday trading week with a third of a percent decline as market sentiment coils. Market volumes are set to drain out of global exchanges as investors broadly hang up their hats for the Christmas holiday, and global markets will be shuttered on Wednesday.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicator on the 4-hour chart stays below 50 and GBP/USD is yet to make a 4-hour close above the 20-period Simple Moving Average (SMA), reflecting buyers' hesitancy.
On the downside, interim support is located at 1.2550 (static level) before 1.2480 (static level) and 1.2400 (static level, round level). Looking north, resistances could be seen at 1.2600 (static level, round level), 1.2640 (50-period SMA) and 1.2680 (100-period SMA).
After suffering large losses on Wednesday and Thursday, GBP/USD corrected higher on Friday but ended up closing the week in the red. The pair stays in a consolidation phase below 1.2600 early Monday as trading conditions remain thin ahead of the Christmas holiday.
The Federal Reserve's (Fed) hawkish dot plot and the Bank of England relatively dovish language following the last policy meeting of the year triggered a sharp decline in GBP/USD. The positive shift seen in risk mood heading into weekend on US Congress' avoidance of a government shutdown caused the US Dollar (USD) to weaken against its rivals and helped the pair erase a portion of its weekly losses.
Meanwhile, the softer-than-expected November inflation data put additional weight on the USD's shoulders. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, the Federal Reserve's (Fed) preferred gauge of inflation, rose 0.1% on a monthly basis in November. This reading followed the 0.3% increase recorded in October and came in below the market expectation of 0.2%.
In the absence of high-tier data releases, investors could react to changes in risk perception in the second half of the day. At the time of press, US stock index futures were up between 0.1% and 0.5%. A bullish opening in Wall Street could make it difficult for the USD to stay resilient against its rivals and support GBP/USD.
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