According to the hourly chart, the GBP/USD pair traded between the levels of 1.3357 and 1.3425 on Friday. Thus, I can say that Friday passed quite calmly for the Briton. It failed to recover from Thursday's losses, but it didn't lose anything else. On Monday, at the opening of trading, the pair fell again, this time by 90 points, but quickly recovered and is now trading more or less stable. Although there were two important rebounds from the levels on Thursday and Friday, I believe that traders are in a restless state now. Thus, the levels can be ignored, and the pair can perform sharp reversals and strong movements. The fall is not yet complete. The more the conflict in Ukraine develops, the more likely it is that we will see the euro/dollar and pound/dollar pairs much lower. All markets are now analyzing and considering only the information related to the military conflict in Ukraine. Therefore, all other information background has practically no effect on the mood of traders. And in any case, it's practically gone now.
On Friday, reports on orders for long-term goods, personal income, and expenses of Americans, the University of Michigan consumer confidence index were released in the United States. Although this data turned out to be quite strong, the dollar could not show growth. Today, the situation is unlikely to change, since the calendars of events in the UK and the USA today do not contain a single important entry. Traders have already experienced a morning shock when the shares of Russian companies and the Russian ruble once again collapsed. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation was forced to urgently raise the interest rate to somehow stop the devaluation of the ruble. However, there is an assumption that this is far from the end. It is already known that many Russian banks will be cut off from Swift, and the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation abroad may be frozen. All this will significantly reduce the regulator's ability to stabilize the monetary unit of Russia. And these events also affect other countries and other currencies.
On the 4-hour chart, the pair performed a drop to the corrective level of 61.8% (1.3274) and rebound from it. The growth process has begun in the direction of the corrective level of 50.0% (1.3457), but it can stop at any moment since the US dollar is used by all worlds as a "safe asset". Therefore, it grows when a complex geopolitical situation develops in the world. Fixing the pair's rate below the level of 61.8% will increase the chances of a further fall towards the next Fibo level of 76.4% (1.3044).
Commitments of Traders (COT) Report:
The mood of the "Non-commercial" category of traders has changed dramatically again over the last reporting week. The number of long contracts decreased in the hands of speculators by 8309, and the number of short contracts increased by 346. Thus, the general mood of the major players has become more "bearish", but at the same time, equality in the number of long and short contracts is now observed in almost all categories of traders. Thus, I conclude that the mood is now more neutral than bearish. But even this does not matter much, since geopolitical factors can continue to have a very significant impact on the mood of traders. Therefore, their mood can change very sharply and quickly.
News calendar for the USA and the UK:
On Monday, the calendars of economic events in the United States and Great Britain do not contain important and interesting events. Thus, the influence of the informational economic background on the mood of traders today will be absent. Nevertheless, the geopolitical news may once again put traders in a fighting state.
GBP/USD forecast and recommendations to traders:
At this time, I would recommend selling the British if there are new sell signals (rebounds from important levels, closures under important levels). I would not recommend buying a pound right now due to the critical situation in Ukraine, due to which risky currencies are falling.
