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EUR/USD Options Stick to Upside Bias

EUR
  • Currency options activity has picked up Tuesday, with EUR/USD’s recent rally back above 1.07 clearly helping trigger some volumes. Follows yesterday’s trading day which marked the highest DTCC-tracked options volumes of the year and the highest in a session since late November.
  • Short-end EUR/USD vols have ticked higher as they begin to capture both the US CPI release on Thursday as well as the beginning of Q1 earnings season in the US (kicking off Friday). USD downside protection has been in focus, evident in the recovery for EUR/USD 1m risk reversals, as well as the EUR/USD call bias that persists in options trade today. Over $3 in EUR/USD calls have traded for every $1 in puts at the NY crossover. Strikes at 1.0900 up to 1.1050 have been the focus.
  • Resultingly, EUR/USD calls have gotten more expensive, with a 1m trade now costing just under 120 USD pips vs. just under 100 pips mid-December. Markets now assign an options-implied probability of 14.5% EUR/USD trading above 1.10 at end-January and a 30% chance of touching the level.

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