Forex Blog

Dollar (and, actually, Japanese yen too) showed a major triumph on Forex market today after the Bank of England decided to go down from 5.50% to 5.25% on the main interest rate. And despite, while BoE lowered the rate, ECB held the rate at the same 4.00% value, dollar bulls pushed EUR/USD down as well as the GBP/USD currency pair. And that’s on the disappointing fundamental data coming out in U.S.

U.S. initial jobless claims improved from the previous report at a little worse pace than market strategists expected — it fell from 378,000 (revised up from 375,000) to 356,000. That’s still a very high number for this indicator and it’s a clear sign of the current elevated recession risks.

Consumer credit in the United States in December grew by $2.4 billion — a very low number compared to the November’s $15.4 billion increase. Even pessimistic expectations of $8.0 million growth were above the released value.

EUR/USD hit new monthly minimum at 1.3606 today, bouncing back from both the psychological support of 1.3600 and technical support level around 1.3605. One of the main reason for the vigorous dollar behavior can be seen in ECB today’s currency intervention of more than €130 billions. Such a harsh step was needed to prevent a highly possible financial market collapse.
Economical statistics which came this day from the Unites States of America strengthened USD even further. Advance retail sales came out at 0.3% growth compared to 0.2% expected and retail sales excluding autos came out at 0.4% compared to 0.3% expected. Manufacturers’ and trade inventories, seasonly adjusted, are estimated at 0.4% growth compared to May 2007 (at the expected level).

With an impressively high ISM Services index today’s macroeconomic data from United States was a very optimistic news for USD bulls. June ISM non-manufacturing index came out at 60.7% - 1% higher than May number, and a lot better than expected, since the negative change in ISM index was expected. Crude oil inventories for the previous week came out at a very good level too. They rose 3.1 million barrels - which will probably mean that there will be no problems for the U.S. holidays period. Initial jobless claims were a bit worse than expected (318,000 against 315,000) - but it’s not a big deal really, especially if overall unemployment data which will come tomorrow will be OK.
As for the Eurozone - European Central Bank decided to leave the interest rates at 4% - no surprise here. But they also didn’t mention any dangers of inflation, like they did before, so it might be a first sign for the end of ECB rate hike.
Bank of England increased the interest rates to 5.75% as expected. The main concern for them is still an inflationary pressure, but the biggest locomotive of the consumer prices in United Kingdom - real estate market is showing a slowdown.

Last day of a Forex trading week brought some good results for EUR/USD currency pairs, moving it past 1.3450 level (but still not breaking the recent downtrend). The main reasons of such behavior of EUR/USD can be seen in slightly better than expected April industrial orders which in year-to-year period changed by +12.2% against +8.7% anticipated by experts. Also, Jean-Claude Trichet, President of ECB, spoke about Eurozone economics marking it mostly in very optimistic epithets, that could give Euro bulls some hope for the faster interest rates increase by ECB.

Today on 13:30 (UTC) ECB statement was released as the interest rates in the Eurozone were increased by 0.25% to 4.00% as expected. Jean-Claude Trichet spoke about current and expected situations in European economy and the main lines can be concluded in the following: economy is growing at a fast pace (better than expected), while inflation remains strong (because of oil prices) and the price index will be in ECB main view. This can lead to a conclusion that rates can be increased in near future. Despite of this, EUR/USD Forex pair continues its floating around 1.3500 level going nowhere for now.