The headline US durable goods orders report was stronger than expected with a 1.8% increase for January, but the figure was inflated by aircraft orders and underlying sales declined 0.2% on the month following a revised 0.9% gain for January. Pending home sales data was weaker than expected with a 2.8% decline for January which pushed annual growth to 12- month lows. The Euro rallied to highs around 1.0630 after the US data as the dollar faded slightly.
Dallas Fed President Kaplan stated that the Fed should increase interest rates in the near future which helped boost speculation of a rate hike in March with futures markets indicating the chances of a move had increased to around 50%. The shift helped underpin the dollar and the Euro retreated below 1.0600 and held just below this level on Tuesday.
Onto June A slew of strong US economic data over recent weeks had boosted expectations for how the culmination of the Fed’s two-day meeting would be presented to the public last night. The story goes back further. The narrative dominant in late-2023 of a US economy in need of restrictive monetary policy was unavoidable. The […]
Germany and the EU The Germany Supply Chain Act came into force in 2023 as a result of Germans wanting to do something good for employees in other countries in particular with respect to human rights and environmental issues. So far so good. But a combination of cost and bureaucracy overlaid with the difficulty of […]
Emergency Stop In the early hours of trading on Monday morning, sudden and significant buying pressure within USDJPY has markets wondering: is this the signal that local authorities are taking another stab at active market intervention? In a critical week for FX, with central bank decisions and a slew of top-level economic data from across […]