The EUR/USD exchange rate jumped 1.73% to an intra-day high of 1.1306 on Monday after a Bloomberg news wire report that President Barack Obama had told a Group of Seven industrial nations summit that the strong dollar was a problem. A senior U.S. official, as well as Mr. Obama himself, later denied that the comment was made. Nonetheless, the EUR/USD closed on Monday at 1.1129 dollars per euro, up 1.6%, making back all of its Friday losses, after the May U.S. non-farm payroll report.

Last Friday, the EUR/USD was down 1.68% intra-day, to 1.1048, after the U.S. non-farm payroll report came in better than expectations. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said that the U.S. government and private businesses added 280,000 jobs in May to the U.S. economy. Economists had been expecting a gain of 225,000 jobs.

The EUR/USD was trading in the narrow range between 1.1214 and 1.1342 dollars per euro, while the currency markets were digesting data from the eurozone GDP and U.S. JOLT reports on Tuesday. 

The European Union's statistics agency said on Tuesday that the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of the 19 countries in the eurozone was revised upward to a 0.4% increase, from 0.3% gain, in the fourth-quarter 2014. The first-quarter 2015 eurozone GDP remains unchanged as the weak euro did little to boost eurozone economic growth impacted by imports that grew much more quickly than exports.

The U.S. Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLT) report released by the BLS on Tuesday said that the number of job openings rose to 5.4 million on the last business day of April, the highest since the series began in December 2000. Over the 12 months ending in April 2015, hires totaled 60.0 million and separations totaled 57.2 million, yielding a net employment gain of 2.8 million. According to the BLS data, the U.S. government and private businesses added 3.62 million jobs in the past 12-months ended May 2015. 

As of June 2, there are 240,461 short positions of euro FX (CME:6E), traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), by asset manager/institutional and leveraged funds. This is compared to about 83,809 long positions, according to the Commitment of Traders (COT) data released by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) each Friday. Hedge funds may be making a pullback as they reduced their short positions by 15,138 from last week, where euro FX contracts are traded in units of 125,000 euros.

From our technical viewpoint, the EUR/USD bounced off the short-term trendline support of the symmetrical triangle at 1.09 dollars per euro. The EUR/USD could break out the symmetrical triangle at 1.13 dollars per euro and the technical head resistance of 1.14 dollars per euro in coming weeks as the currency markets are expecting a positive outcome from the Greece debt talks. The projected conservative target for a breakout event is 1.237 dollars per euro, determined by adding the width at the top of the pattern to the point of breakout.

The negotiations between Greece, the ECB and IMF creditors are beginning to look like a “dog and pony” show, as the goalposts have moved several times, even though the expiration of its bailout program is June 30. Since Mr. Draghi said that he wants Greece to remain in the eurozone, we expect that the Greek debt negotiations will yield a positive outcome, despite tough talk from both sides. Nonetheless, a negative outcome could trigger a massive euro sell-off.