Forex Blog

Dollar started to trade higher today against euro after the productivity report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out, as it was trading against pound sterling earlier in the morning after some bearish data on United Kingdom PMI and housing were released.

Nonfarm productivity (revised value) in third quarter of 2007 increased unexpectedly well — by 6.3%. Previous value was 4.9% and the analysts’ expectations averaged at 5.8% growth. This indicator without any doubts will continue to strengthen dollar until the end of the week.

Factory orders in October also showed a growth that almost no one could see happening — 0.5%, while analysts’ consensus was at 0% stagnation.

Bad news came with non-manufacturing ISM report which showed today that November Business activity index in services sector declined to 54.1% from 55.8% in October, which worse drop than it was expected — 55.0%.

Crude oil inventories again were in the red zone, but today with a very high negative value — 8 million barrels drop compared to previous week report. Combined with today’s OPEC decision not to increase oil output, this news may hit dollar as the oil prices will surge to the new maximums.