Exchange traded funds tracking the euro’s movements versus the dollar spiked Friday morning before a key European Union summit. Markets were hoping leaders can hammer out a deal to step the debt crisis amid talk of boosting Europe’s rescue fund.
EU finance minsters are scheduled to meet over the weekend, followed by another summit next week.
A further summit was scheduled for Oct. 26 after Germany and France said the European Union needs more time to seal a “global and ambitious” accord, Bloomberg reported.
Some EU ministers and officials were meeting Friday to discuss the debt crisis. They were examining how to increase the European Financial Stability Facility, recapitalize banks and provide more financial assistance to Greece, according to a Reuters report.
CurrencyShares Euro Trust (NYSEArca: FXE) was up nearly 1% in early U.S. trading Friday. The currency ETF follows the euro’s fluctuations against the greenback.
European stocks also rallied on optimism over the summit. Vanguard Europe ETF (NYSEArca: VGK) was up over 2%. [Debt Hopes Continue to Lift European Stock ETFs, Euro]
According to German sources, the EU has agreed to recapitalize European banks but no immediate plans have been outlined on leveraging the rescue fund, reports Chuck Mikolajczak for Reuters.
“We feel there’s a lot more downside potential for this market that may come after this weekend,” Channing Smith, co-portfolio manager at Capital Advisors Growth Fund, said in a WSJ.com report. “It’s very aggressive for investors to assume the European situation is going to be solved in its entirety by this weekend.”
“It’s a ping-pong game — people have been burned by reacting to individual news stories only to have them refuted, withdrawn or contradicted,” Stephen Massocca, managing director, Wedbush Morgan, said in the Reuters report. “Next week we will get something more definitive but at this point, to react to these individual whispers and news stories has been a fool’s game.”
The euro ETF rose to touch its 50-day simple moving average on Friday.
CurrencyShares Euro Trust
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Read the disclaimer; Tom Lydon is a board member of the funds for Rydex|SGI.
Max Chen contributed to this article.