With no bailout for Greece yet, the euro moved a bit lower against the Great Britain pound and the Japanese yen, though it was little changed against the US dollar. Hope remains, but deadline is almost at the door.
Talks between Greece and its three main creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union — yet again ended without a satisfying conclusion. It looks like some necessary steps were made as the negotiators were fairly optimistic. Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said:
I am confident that we will reach a compromise that will help the Eurozone and Greece to overcome the crisis.
The next meeting will be on Saturday as Christine Lagarde, chief of the International Monetary Fund, explained:
We were given a proposal by the Greek parties at the last hour. We need some more work to examine their proposals.
At the same time, Germany’s leader Angela Merkel did not demonstrate the same optimism:
We still haven’t made the necessary progress; in some places it looks like we’re even going backwards.
Many market participants are weary of the uncertainty caused by the situation in Greece and want the story (or farce some may say) to end at last. The deadline is close, and it looks like something should happen by the end of the month, be it good or bad, though it is important to remember that the politicians are experts in kicking the can down the road.
EUR/USD was at about 1.1206 as of 23:43 GMT today after opening at 1.1202. EUR/GBP ticked down from 0.7131 to 0.7114 and EUR/JPY slipped from 138.76 to 138.45.
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