You may have seen this but reported in Bloomberg tonight:
``The euro is poised to fall significantly,'' said Akira Takei, who helps oversee the equivalent of $32.9 billion as general manager of international fixed-income investment at Mizuho Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. ``A slowdown in the U.S. will eventually filter through to Europe. The ECB will be forced to cut.''
Inflation, while ``alarmingly high,'' will slow toward year-end, ECB Governing Council member Klaus Liebscher said in comments to reporters today in Dornbirn, Austria.
Traders raised bets the bank will cut its benchmark interest rate this year, with the implied yield on the December Euribor contract falling 2 basis points to 4.15 percent. The ECB left its benchmark interest rate on hold at a six-year high of 4 percent last month.
The euro may fall to $1.5341 by the end of next week provided it weakens below $1.5599, said Kengo Suzuki, a currency strategist at Shinko Securities Co., citing technical charts.
`Double Top'
The first level of so-called support at $1.5599 represents the common European currency's average price for the past 20 days, Tokyo-based Suzuki said. The second support level at $1.5341 is the neckline of a pattern known as a double top, which forms when a currency makes two successive peaks of about the same height.