Morgan Stanley says go short:
Today we entered a short EUR/USD trade at 1.3750. While Italian 10-year bond yields have tightened from the highs reached earlier this week, we believe yields still well above 6% are unsustainable for a debt market of 1.9tr EUR (third largest in the world). This means that Italy will need to spend nearly 10% of its annual GDP on interest payments alone. Meanwhile, political uncertainties add to concerns in the Eurozone, with new regimes in Greece and Italy. We remain fundamentally bearish on EUR, and believe it will retest 1.30 as Italy runs the risk of being “too big to save.”
Goldman Sachs says go long:
The nomination of Lucas Papademos as Greek PM governing with support from all key parties reduces the risks of escalating confrontation between other Eurozone countries and Greece. Indeed, the chance of more structural reforms being implemented in
Greece has risen as well. In Italy the high likelihood of a unity technocrat-led government being put in place over the weekend, led by Mario Monti, is also encouraging.
These two developments suggest that Eurozone fiscal tensions could continue to decline, at least for a period of time. FX markets had started to price extremely negative scenarios again in recent days as visible in risk reversals for example. Given the policy news described above, we think the fiscal risk premium can decline again in the near future and hence we see the potential for a quick EUR/$ move back towards 1.40.
We would go long EUR/$ with a narrow stop at 1.35 for an initial target of 1.40 (currently at 1.3715).
A day later, the EUR is buying $1.3532. I guess Morgan is winning this one!