Investing.com -- EUR/USD ended Wednesday's session virtually unchanged, as currency traders expressed hesitancy to make any major moves ahead of a highly anticipated European Central Bank press conference in Malta.
The currency pair traded in a tight range between 1.1324 and 1.1386 before settling at 1.1339, down 0.001 or 0.05% on the session. EUR/USD has closed by less than 0.35% in a positive or negative direction in each of the last five sessions. Over the last month of trading the euro has gained roughly 0.30% against the dollar.
EUR/USD likely gained support at 1.1149, the low from October 2 and was met with resistance at 1.1496, the high from Oct. 15.
On Thursday, the ECB's governing council will conclude its two-day meeting on the Mediterranean island, one of two annual meetings its holds each year outside Frankfurt. Last month, euro zone inflation fell by 0.1% from its August level, representing the first time it has decelerated all year.
When the governing council last met in September, ECB president Mario Draghi noted that while the central bank expects the economic recovery to continue, it anticipates that the path to resurgence could take longer than initially forecasted. Citing weakness in the emerging markets, Draghi remarked that the slowdown weighed heavily on global growth and foreign demand for exports throughout the euro zone. Although the ECB may extend the scope of its comprehensive €1.1 trillion quantitative easing program, many economists in Europe do not expect the ECB to make any decisive changes at the meeting.
In September, Draghi said the ECB will "use all the instruments within its mandate," to stimulate growth, while adding the bond buying initiative provides it with "sufficient flexibility" to adjust "the size, composition and duration of the program." While the ECB has the option of increasing the size of its monthly bond purchases to €80 billion a month at the meeting, doing so might provide ammunition for Draghi's critics who do not favor the program.
Investors also await next week's Federal Open Market Committee October monetary policy meeting for further hints on whether the U.S. central bank could lift short-term interest rates before the end of the year. Though the FOMC is not expected to raise its benchmark Federal Funds Rate at the meeting, it could vote to begin policy normalization at its next meeting on Dec. 15-16.
Without the release of any major economic reports this week, the Federal Reserve will weigh the data from the last month since it met last in mid-September. At the meeting, four members of the FOMC voted to wait until 2016 for lift-off. The labor market added only 142,000 non-farm payrolls in September, while long-term inflation remained soft at 1.3%. A Fed rate hike is viewed as bullish for the dollar as foreign investors pile into the greenback in an effort to capitalize on higher yields.
The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the strength of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, gained 0.14% on Wednesday to close at 95.07. The index recorded its fifth winning session over the last six trading days.